
Glass. 



i5. J 7 



Book — . K"r fi'"-' 



> 



By WILLIAM BURGESS 



The Religion of Ruskin 

A Biographical and Antholog- 
ical Study 

Large 8vo, net $2.00 

The Bible in Shakespeare 

A Study of the Relation of the 
Works of William Shakespeare to 
the Bible 

Large 8vo, net $1.50 



THE RELIGION 

of RUSKIN 



The Life and Works of "John Ruskin 
A Biographical and Anthological Study 



BY 

WILLIAM BURGESS 

Author of "The Bible in Shakspeare," 
Etc. 




New York Chicago Toronto 

Fleming H. Revell Company 

London and Edinburgh 






Copyright, 1907, by 
WILLIAM BURGESS 






"To my Dear and Ethereal Ruskin, whom God preserve." — Inscrip- 
tion of Thos. Carlyle in a hook presented to Ruskin. 

"There is nothing going on among us as notable to me as those 
fierce lightning-bolts Ruskin is copiously and desperately pouring 
into the black world of Anarchy all around him. No other man 
in England that I meet has in him that divine rage against iniquity, 
falsity and baseness that Ruskin has, and that every man ought to 
have." — Letter from Carlyle to Emerson. 

"No other critic ever occupied such a position. He expresses 
thoughts on art in words which, in their exquisite collocation, 
their perfection at once of form and lucidity, have been rivalled in 

our generation, only by Cardinal Newman His older books 

are among the treasures of the bibliophile, his later works are 
purchased like scarce plates, his opinions are quoted like texts from 
a holy book." — The Spectator. 



CONTENTS 



Explanation and Books Consulted vii 

Preface ix 

Index , 4^ 



Book I. The Ln^E of John Buskin. « 

1. Ruskin — Ohildhood and Youth, 

2. Ruskin — The Man. 

3. Ruskin — Art Critic and Author. 

4. Ruskin — Reformer and Economist. 

5. Ruskin — Lecturer and Teacher. 

6. The Religious Mind of Ruskiik 



Book II. Religious Thought in Abt. 

1. Modern, Painters, Vol I. — Truth and General Principles. 

2. Modern Painters, Vol. II. — Truth and Beauty in Nature, 

3. Modern Painters, Vol. III. — Of Many Things in Art. 

4. Modern Painters, Vol. IV. — Mountain Beauty. 

5. Modern Painters, Vol. V. — Ideas of Relation. (Leaf and Cload 

Beauty.) 

6. Pre-Raphaelitism — (Work in Art). 

7. Giotto and His Works. 

8. Elements of Drawing. 

9. Elements of Perspective. 

10. Address at Cambridge. 

11. History and Criticism of Art. 

12. Lectures on Art. 

13. The E}agle'8 Nest. 

*il4. Ariadne Florentina. (Engraving.) 

15. The Laws of Fesole. (Elementary principles.) 

16. The Arrows of the Chace. (Vol. I. Art Education.) 

17. The Art of England. 

18. Our Fathers Have Told Us. (Art in Christendom.) 

Book III. Religious Light in Abchitectube and Scuxptubb. 

1. The Poetry of Architecture. 

2. The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 1. Sacrifice. 2. Troth. 

3. Power. 4. Bea'uty. 5. Life. 6. Memory. 7. Obedience. 

T 



vi CONTENTS 

3. The Stones of Venice— 3 Vols. (Architecture.) 

4, Lectures on Architecture and Painting. 

6. The Two Paths. (Art and Manufacture.) 

6. The Study of Architecture. 

7. Val D'Amo. (Tuscan Art) 

8. Aratra Pentelici. (Elements of Sculpture.) 

9. Mornings in Florence. (Studies of Christian Art). 
20. St Mark's Rest (Venice.) 



Book IV. Religious Studies ik Nature. 

1. Ethics of the Dust (Crystals.) 

2. The Queen of the Air. 

3. Love's Meinie. (Birds.) 

4. Deucalion. (Minerals and Waves.) 

5. Proserpina. (Wayside Flowers.) 

6. The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century. 

7. In Montibus Sanctis. (Mountains.) 

8. Coeli Enrarrant. 

9. Hortus Inclusus. (Letters to Ladies.) 

10. The King of the Golden River. (A Fairy Story.) 



Book V. PoLtriCAL Economy and Other Things. 

1. A Joy Forever. (Political Economy of Art) 

2. Unto This Last (Political Economy.) 

3. Munera Pulveris. (The Laws of Political Economy.) 

4. Time and Tide. (The Laws of Work.) 

5. Crown of Wild Olive. (Work, Traffic, War.) 

6. Fors Clavigera. (Letters to Workmen, Etc.) 

7. Arrows of the Chace — Vol. 11. (Politics, Economy, Etc.) 

8. Fiction Fair and Foul. 



Book VI. Religion in Life and Poetry. 

1. Sheepfolds. (Christian Nurture.) 

2. Sesame and Lilies. (Life and Purpose.) 

3. The Pleasures of England. (Learning, Faith, D«ed.) 

4. Praeterita. (Autobiographical.) 

5. Poems. 



EXPLANATORY NOTES. 

In preparing Books II to VI of this Anthology the writings of Ruskin have 
first been arranged, as far as seemed practicable, into groups of subjects — then 
quoted in the chronological order of the works in each group. The reader may 
thus find the progress of the great Author's religious mind in his own words. 

All Ruskin's larger works were arranged by himself, or under his direction, 
into volumes, parts, sections, chapters and paragraphs, to which are often at- 
tached lengthy prefaces and appendices. 

The method adopted in the following selections is to give the name and 
ntmiber of the volume at the head of the chapter, letting the Author's own 
paragraph number stand at the beginning of each quotation, and giving the 
further references at the end. 

Thus on page 105 of this volume will be found paragraphs on "Sensual- 
ity Fatal to Beauty in Art." The numbers 21 and 24 are those of Ruskin's own 
paragraphing and this, with Pt. Ill, Sec. 1, Ch. 14, puts the reader in possession 
of the full reference, viz. : Modern Painters, Vol. II, Part III, Section 1, Chap- 
ter 14, Paragraphs 21, 24. 

In some instances, where the quotations are continuous, the references to 
the chapters, etc., are only given at the end of several, but the numbers of the 
paragraphs are always given. This is especially notable of Vol. IV, Modem 
Painters. 

In still other instances no reference is needed other than the number of 
the paragraph of the work from which it is taken. 

It must be understood that the topical headlines are our own and not 
Ruskin's. 



BOOKS CONSULTED IN THIS WORK 

•Tiuskin's Complete Works." "Life of John Ruskin," Collingwood. "John 
Ruskin," Frederick Harrison. "John Ruskin, Social Reformer," J. A. Hobson. 
"An Introduction to the Writings of John Ruskin," Vida D. Scudder. "Letters 
to the Clergy," F. A. Malleson. "Letters to M. G. and H. G." "Letters of Rus- 
kin to Chas. Eliot Norton." "Modem Men of Letters," J. H. Friswell. "Bible 
References," Mary and Ellen Gibbs. "Art and Life," W. S. Kennedy. "Lit- 
erary Leaders of Modem England," W. J. Dawson. "Great Books of Life 
Teachers," Newell Dwight Hillis. "Great Epochs of Art History," J. M. Hop- 
pin. 'Nature Studies from Ruskin," Rose Porter. "Three Great Teachers," 
Alex. H. Jopp. Carlyle's Works, Emerson's Essays, etc., etc. 



PREFACE 

If all the best things of Ruskin were contained in "Sesame and Lilies" and 
two or three other of his lesser works, of which there are numerous reprints, 
there would be no need of this book, and its publication would be an imperti- 
nence. But of the millions of intelligent, educated people, how few there are 
who know of the rich treasures which abound in the monumental works of this 
great teacher. 

If any should mistake this as offering, in any way, a substitute for the gen- 
eral study of his works, we shall, to that extent, fail in our purpose. Very 
sincerely and earnestly it is hoped that, while this volume will direct attention 
to the religious and ethical teaching of Ruskin, and serve as a book of refer- 
ence, it will also stimulate interest in the writings of this Master of English 
in all their great sweep of intellectual horizon. 

In his first volume of Fors Clavigera Ruskin himself commends the work 
attempted here. He says: "/ have always thought that more true force of per- 
suasion might be obtained by rightly choosing and arranging what others have 
said, than by painfully saying it over again in one's own way." 

The purpose here is to give, in a single volume, the very best of Ruskin's 
religious thoughts and interpretations, together with a brief history of his life 
and work. Indeed, broadly speaking, the entire volume is biographical, for the 
bibliography of a great writer is also his biography. It is thus that we know 
Shakspeare and Carlyle, and even Emerson, who is so near to us. Our sketch, 
therefore, of the circumstances and incidents of Ruskin's life is but an intro- 
duction to the fuller revelation of this unique man, to be found in the connected 
and chronologically arranged anthology which follows. 

It may be said that there are already excellent biographies of this great 
teacher, written by men who enjoyed his personal friendship and who had 
ample opportunities to study his life and character. But this volume would 
hardly have answered its purpose without, at least, a brief account of the per- 
sonal life of the man whose writings it presents, and we very gladly acknowl- 
edge the abler pens of Mr. W. G. Collingwood and Mr. Fred. Harrison, whose 
books are each a delightful tribute to the memory of their old friend. 

The plan of this volume is a division of the work into six sections or "books," 
the first being devoted to the Life of Ruskin, and the other five into groups of 
subjects, with a brief outline of the history, purpose and aim of each respective 
work, from which the selections are taken. This arrangement provides for the 
continuous reading of our Author's mind on many subjects, instead of mere 
quotations set apart under some general heading. Thus, if one desire a con- 
secutive reading of Ruskin's wide range of thought on the moral aspects of 
"Beauty," he will find it here in Book second. 

The book is prepared, not for the sake of reproducing the literary gems 
which abound in Ruskin's works, — but more for the purpose of bringing into 



X PREFACE 

Tiew, and making popularly available, the religious and moral thoughts of 
this great writer. For it should be known that every subject, however secular 
its character, or technical its study, appealed to him, primarily, from these 
aspects. Art in all its many forms interests him first as so many expressions 
of some ethical or moral truth. Whether he writes of the old or the new 
school of painters; or of architecture, or sculpture; or if he travels into the 
more debatable subjects of philosophy and political economy; all themes 
alike, with him, take their root, or find their center in religion. 

Ruskin is singularly and strikingly the prophet of his times, who wrote 
and spoke in the purest of English prose-poetry, and in a form that can be 
readily understood and appreciated. 

Carlyle was a prophet, too, and in some respects, stronger and more 
rugged, but his language was often grotesque and unfamiliar. 

Ruskin saw that Art had been relegated to a place wholly distinct and sep- 
arate from the experiences and values of life. Its relation to religion was 
cramped and colored with the ascetism of mediaeval times. It had no warmth 
and no touch of sympathy with life as it is; but was formal and severe, or 
else, merely the expression of ideal saints and imaginary angels. In 1848 a 
brotherhood (Pre-Raphaelites) was organised to break down these false stand- 
ards and return to the simplicity and naturalness of true art. To this move- 
ment Ruskin gave his able support, and it is very largely through the influ- 
ence of his powerful advocacy that the best of the school of artists of his 
time were able to take front rank in public favor. Thus, Turner owed every- 
thing to him, and such artists as Holman Hunt, Rossetti, and Millais were 
greatly his debtors. On the other hand he heartily disliked and openly dis- 
credited such fanciful artists as Gustave Dore, especially his Bible illustrations. 

Ruskin's firm adherence to fundamentals in religious truth, through all the 
changes of his experience and faith, is the golden thread in the web of his life. 
His constant appeal to the Scriptures, as of final and unquestionable authority, 
is the more remarkable in view of his intellectual environment and of his revolt 
from the orthodoxy of his time. Indeed, here is the explanation of his uniform 
use of simple and vigorous English. He built upon the Bible which, with the 
works of old English divines, such as Hooker and Bunyan, varied with his 
favorites, Scott and Wordsworth, formed the staple of his early reading. 

The spirit of the age was the expression of materialistic philosophy repre- 
sented by such men as Darwin, Tyndall, and Spencer. These directed their 
great powers of research to the purely material. In this they rendered great 
service to the human family and no protest would be called for, if that were all 
that is claimed for them. But when their teachings are treated as answering 
to the whole realm of man ; when spiritual truth is subjected to their philosophy, 
they are credited with a function for which they are, not only not equipped, 
— but have absolutely no soul to appreciate. Concentration of gaze upon 
one object, or set of objects, has always a tendency to limit the vision, even 
of the greatest of intellects. No one should be surprised that so great a mind 
as Darwin's did not directly contribute to the Science of Astronomy or the 
Faith of Religion. His mind was wholly turned earthwards, — the heavens 
offered no revelation to him; his eye was not directed heavenwards. 



PREFACE xi 

But Ruskin's mind was many-sided. He looked into all Nattire and his 
soul was not bounded by his intellectual environment. His persistent, imal- 
tered doctrine was that "Man's use and function is to be the witness of the 
glory of God, and to advance that glory by his reasonable and resultant hap- 
piness." 

Not only was Ruskin an interpreter of Scripture truths in the same sense as 
was Dante, Shakspeare, and other writers who embodied them (often uncon- 
sciously) in their dramatic and poetic works. He was emphatically and pur- 
posely a Bible teacher ; as much so as any theological professor. Nay, more so, 
for although he did not profess any theological system, his works are a veritable 
Bible university, in which the Scriptures are profoundly studied with a purpose 
and are illumined by the light of the finest scholarship, the deepest thought 
and a very devout spirit. 

Let the reader spend an hour with our excerpts from Modern Painters, and 
then another hour with The Seven Lamps, and again with The Stones of 
Venice; let him observe how the numbered paragraphs, here given, invite him 
to many others, in the works of their author, for a vast fund of instruction 
in Biblical truth, such as he may search for in vain in whole theological libra- 
ries. Here, indeed, the Scriptures are studied in the light of Art, Science, Nature, 
History, and last and best, of Moral Philosophy and Spiritual perception; and 
then, finally, arc presented and illuminated by a clearness of style, an eloquence 
and poetry such as is not surpassed in all the literary world. 

The labor involved in this work has not been light, although very enjoyable. 
It would have been much easier to have selected some theme and written an 
equal number of pages of original matter. But it is not new books that the 
world needs. We have more than enough, unless one comes as a Voice speak- 
ing a new message to the World. 

What is needed by many a teacher, and we think also by many a preacher, 
is an open sesame to the mines of intellectual and spiritual wealth which resides 
in the literature of the greater geniuses. The one thing attempted here is, to 
give to the average reader, a key to what is greatest and best in one, at least, 
of the Master Minds of the world's Literature. 

The writer does not undertake to prove that Ruskin experienced no break 
in his religious faith. On the contrary, it is shown in chapter VI. of the accom- 
panying sketch of his life, that such experience was his, in very real and 
stormy form. 

But if the reader will follow the selections in the chronological order in 
which they are here placed, as well as the chapter referred to above, he will, 
I think, find that Ruskin's mind was ever reverent, and that, even when his 
intellectuality refused to recognize the orthodox classifications and utterances 
of evangelical religion, and while the darkest shadow hung over his soul, his 
moral being turned always to the Truth of God and the Eternal Essentials of 
the Christian religion. 



BOOK FIRST 



Life of John Ruskin 



LIFE OF JOHN RUSKIN 



RUSKIN— CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH. 

The child is father of the man." — Wordsivorih. 

The age which gave us Shakspeare, Milton and Bacon has been 
called "the golden age" — the •crown of all the ages for literary splen- 
dor and -creative genius in the English tongue. But in the early 
yeare of the nineteenth century the "stars" which appeared, — if not 
so brilliant, — were yet more numerous and varied, filling a place in. 
the world's illumination that has never been surpassed. 

Carlyle came just before the century's dawn, Maoaulay in the first 
year of it, Emerson three years later, and Hawthorne was born July 
4th, 1804. The year 1809 gave us William Ewart Gladstone, Abra- 
ham Lincoln, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Charles Darwin, Edgar Allen 
Poe, and Alfred Tennyson. 

And these are not all. No grander group of men and women ever 
engaged in human service than that which includes the moral and 
intellectual leaders of the first half of the nineteenth century. 
What a noble army of Apostles 1 Breaking down hitherto impreg- 
nable walls of superstition and ignorance and bearing the banner 
of Christian civilization into darkest heathendom were John. 
Williams, Robert Moffat, David Livingstone and John Paton. 
Preaching the gospel with a power and eloquence never surpassed 
since the Galilean Teacher himself taught in Palestine, we have 
Frederick W. Robertson, Charles G. Finney, Henry Ward Beecher, 
Charles H. Spurgeon, Phillips Brooks, Henry Drummond, Dwight 
L. Moody, Joseph Parker and many more ; and leading in woman's 
work of emancipation were Elizabeth Fry, Florence Nightingale, 
and a little later, Frances E. Willard and Josephine E. Butler. 

In the realm of pK>etry we had Wordsworth, Whittier, Longfellow, 
Lowell, Bryant, Hemans, Havergal, and the Brownings; in gen- 

3 



4 TRE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

eral literature Scott, Cooper, Kingsley, Thackeray, Dickens, Eliot, and 
in that of science such men as Tyndall, Huxley, Mill, Bain and Spen- 
cer/ Yet higher than these among the world's teachers and inter- 
preters stands — John Ruskin. "By acclamation," says Dr. Hillis, 
"we vote Ruskin the first prose writer of his century."^ "Other men 
are greater," says Prof. Vida D. Scudder, "stronger in thought, 
more balanced in character, mightier in creative power, but no one 
has turned upon the complex modern world a nature more keen 
in appreciative insight, more many sided, sensitive and pure."' 

John Ruskin was born in London, February 8, 1819, of ScoteK 
parentage. In his earliest years he gave promise of a rare and 
unique personality. Mr. Fred. Harrison, his long-time friend and 
one of his biographers, speaks of him as "this miraculous infant,'*- 
and truly, his infant genius is one of the marvels of his life. Mr, 
Harrison tells how Ruskin's mother used to sing to him the old 
nursery lines: — "Hush-a-by baby, on the tree-top"; and even 
as an infant, he objected to the bad rhyme: "When the 
wind blows the cradle will rock." John was a babe of four when a 
celebrated artist (Northcote) painted his portrait. The picture of 
a chubby child in white frock and blue sash now hangs in the din- 
ing room at Brantwood.* When the painter, pleased by his patience, 
asked what he would like as a background, he replied, "Blue hills." 
At the same age, it is recorded, that he "wrote with a clear hand, 
spelling correctly," and even before this he preached a sermon to 
his playmates which Mr. Harrison has thought to be worth pre- 
serving: — "People, be dood. If you are dood, Dod will love you, 
if you are not dood, Dod will not love you."^ The child's first let- 
ter bears a postmark which shows it was written when he was just 
turned four. We are told that "it was correct and natural." 

* "Sporadic great men come everywhere. But for a community to get vibrat- 
ing through and through with intensely active life, many geniuses coming together 
and in rapid succession are required. This is why great epochs are so rare, — why 
the sudden bloom of a Greece, an early Rome, a Renaissance, is such a mystery. 
Blow must follow blow so fast that no cooling can occur in the intervals. Then 
the mass of the nation grows incandescent, and may continue to glow by pure 
inertia long after the originators of its internal movement have passed away."- — > 
"The Will to Believe." Prof. W. James. 

' Oreat Books as Life Teachers. 

3 "John Ruskin: Introduction to His Writings." 

* An excellent copy of this picture adorns th<,» London edition of Colling- 
wood's Life of Ruskin. (2 vols.) 

5 "John Ruskin." By Frederick Harrison. 



THE LIFE OF JOHN RUSKIN $ 

Collingwood tells us that as a child Ruskin "was a bookworm 
and the books he read were chosen as favorites from an especial 
interest in the subjects, an interest which arose from his character 
of mind. But he was no milksop or weakling; he was a bright, 
active lad, full of fun and pranks, not without companions, though 
solitary when at home." .... "He was so little afraid of animals 
that he must needs meddle with the fierce Newfoundland dog 'Lion,' 
which bit him in the mouth and spoiled his looks. Another time he 
showed some address in extricating himself from the water-butt. 
He did not fear ghosts or thunder, instead of that his early devel- 
oped landscape feeling showed itself in dread of foxglove dells and 
dark pools of water." .... "At the age of seven he kept a 
diary with much literary skill and regularity, containing very 
accurate descriptions of places which he visited." 

At the age of seven, also, this young prodigy planned the 'publica- 
tion of a set of four volumes, of which, however, he only completed 
one, the whole of which he tells us, "was written and printed in 
imitation of book-print." This volume contained his first six, 
dated, poems and also a sketch which he says was his first effort at 
mountain drawing.^ A copy of the title-page of this volume is given, 
in Prseterita and also some pages of extracts from it. A single pas- 
sage will serve to indicate the mental powers of this "miraculous 
infant" : 

"Harry knew very well what it was and went on with his drawing 
but Lucy soon called him away and bid him observe a great black 
cloud from the north which seemed electrical. Harry ran for an 
electrical apparatus which his father had given him and the cloud 
electrified his apparatus negatively and then a long train of smaller 
ones but before this cloud came a flash of lightning was seen to 
dart through the cloud of dust upon which the negative cloud spread 
very much and dissolved in rain which presently cleared the sky 
After this phenomenon was over and also the surprise Harry began 
to wonder how electricity would get where there was so much water 
but he soon observed a rainbow and a rising mist under it which 
his fancy soon transformed into a female form. He then remem- 
bered the witch of the waters of the Alps who was raised from them 
by takeing some water in the hand and throwing it into the air pro- 
nouncing some unintelligible words. And though it was a tale it 
affected Harry now when he saw in the clouds something like it." 

1 Prseterita, Vol. I. 



6 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

These extra'Cts are printed in Prseterita with imitations of the 
original divisions of line and three "variations of size in imitation 
of type," and notwithstanding that "punctuation is left to the read- 
er's kind conjecture" this is seen to be a remarkable literary pro- 
duction for a child of seven. Two years later he wrote a poem 
which he called "Eudosia, — On the Universe." This poem was 
written in 220 lines and is dated September 28, 1828. A single 
stanza will serve here to show its character and merit: 

"I sing the Pin«, which clothes high Switzer's head 
And high enthroned, grows on a rocky bed, 
On gulphs so deep, on cliffs so high. 
He that would dare climb them, daree to die." 

It was about this time that he wrote the famous sentence: — " 'Tis 
vice, not war, that is the curse of man." 

At eleven young Ruskin was taught Latin, at twelve French, 
and it was now that he began to see Nature with the eyes of Turner, 
the great artist, he (Turner) being about sixty years of age. At 
fifteen Ruskin wrote an essay on "The geologic strata of Mont 
Blanc" which was published in Loudon's Magazine of Natural 
History" (1834). At this time he possessed quite an important 
collection of geologic specimens which he increased by his own 
industry in his wanderings at Matlock, Clifton, or in the Alps. 
He earned enough money by "scribbling" to indulge also in the 
purchase of anything that struck his fancy. He was a veritable 
interrogation point, asking questions that nobody oared to answer, 
and engaging in controversy against all sorts of theories and state- 
ments. "The analytic John Ruskin," says Harrison, "was an 
enfant terrible."^ 

At seventeen, he wrote a masterly article in praise of Turner, and 
ably attacking that great artist's critics. This was written in 1836 
and has been preserved in manuscript. As a specimen foreword of 
Ruskin's literary work Mr. Harrison quotes the following glowing 
extract from that article : 

* Ruskin himself makes no claim to infant genins. He says : — "None such 
existed, except that patience in looking, and precision in feeling, which afterward, 
with due industry, formed my analytic power. In all essential qualities of genius, 
except these, I was deficient ; my memory only of average power. I have lit- 
erally never known a child so incapable of acting a part, or telling a tale. On 
the other hand, I have never known one whose thirst for visible fact was at once 
80 eager and so methodic." — Prceterita, Chap, 3. 



THE LIFE OF JOHN RUSK IN 7 

"His (Turner's) imagination is Shakespearian in its mightiness. 
, . . Many-colored mists are floating above the distant city; 
but such mists as you might imagine to be ethereal spirits, souls of 
the mighty dead breathed out of the tombs of Italy into the blue of 
her bright heaven, and wandering in vague and infinite glory 
around the earth that they have loved. Instinct with the beauty 
of uncertain light, they move and mingle among the pale stars, and 
rise up into the brightness of the illimitable heaven, whose soft, 
sad, blue eye gazes down into the deep waters of the sea forever — 
that sea whose motionless and silent transparency is beaming with 
phosphor light, that emanates out of its sapphire serenity like bright 
dreams into the spirit of a deep sleep. And the spires of the glorious 
city rise indistinctly bright into those living mists like pyramids 
of pale fire from some vast altar ; and amidst the glory of the dream 
there is, as it were, the voice of a multitude entering by the eye, 
arising from the stillness of the city like the summer wind passing 
over the leaves of the forest when a murmur is heard amidst their 
multitude." 

At eighteen Ruskin entered the Oxford University, and he had 
"already seen more of England and the Continent than most sys- 
tematic tourists, and observed and thought about all this, perhaps 
more than any living man. He had, no doubt, written more prose and 
verse than is recorded of any man of his years." 

A sketch of the life of such a youth would be manifestly defective 
which omitted all mention of his love affairs. The father of our 
author, John James Ruskin, was a London Wine-Merchant who 
possessed great business sagacity, and although at the start 
heavily handicapped, succeeded in amassing considerable wealth.* 
His partner was a Frenchman (M. Domecq) who conducted the 
Paris end of the business firm. 

In the year 1836 M. Domecq took his daughters, four in number, 
to England, to visit the Ruskin's at their home in London. John 
was now seventeen and Adele Domecq was a graceful, gay and beau- 
tiful girl of fifteen. What more natural than that the fervid, poetic, 
young Ruskin should fall "head over heels" in love with Adele? 
The following interesting sketch is quoted from Collingwood a3 

1 "My father began business as a wine merchant, with no capital, and a con- 
siderable amount of debt bequeathed him by his grandfather. He accepted the 
bequest and paid them all, before he began to lay by anything for himself, for 
which his best friends called him a fool, and I, without expressing any opinion 
as to his wisdom, which I knew in such matters to be at least equal to mine, have 
written on the granite slab over his grave that he was 'an entirely honest mer- 
chant' " — Ruskin in Fors, Vol. 1, p. 131. 



8 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

much for the portraiture which it contains as for the love affair 
which it records: 

"Adele hewitched him at once with her graceful figure and that 
oval face which was so admired in those times. She was fair, too, 
another recommendation. He was on the brink of seventeen, at 
the ripe moment, and he fell passionately in love with her. She 
was only fifteen, and did not understand his adoration, unspoken 
and unexpressed, except by intense shyness; for he was a very shy 
boy in the drawing-room, though brimming over with life and fun 
among his schoolfellows. And* yet he possessed advantages, if he 
had known how to use them. He was tall and active, light and 
lithe in gesture, not a clumsy, hobbledehoy. He had the face that 
caught the eye, in Rome a few years later, of Keats' Severn, no mean 
judge of poets' faces. He was undeniably clever; he knew all about 
minerals and mountains ; he was quite an artist, and a printed poet. 
But these things weigh little with a girl of fifteen who wants to be 
amused: and so she only laughed at John. He tried to amuse her 
. . . . but the note of passion was too real for the girl and she 
only laughed the more."^ 

Of course the young man wrote poetical effusions to the fair Adele. 
He tells us, in Praeterita : "I dared not address my sonnets straight 
to herself; but when she went back to Paris, wrote her a French 
letter, seven quarto pages long, descriptive of the desolations and 
solitudes of Heme Hill since her departure." 

We may get a glimpse of the love verses of this gifted youth, as 
they were printed in Friendship's Offering at a later date. A single 
verse will serve to note the style. 

"I do not ask a single tear ; but while 

I linger where I must not stay, 
Ch ! give me but a parting smile 

To light me on my lonely way." 

But the course of true love does not run smooth for a genius any 
more than for an ordinary mortal ; Ruskin's first love affair was soon 
doomed. Adele married a rich and handsome young Frenchman. 
Looking back upon this episode when he was sixty-six years old, 
Ruskin says: "The entirely inscrutable thing to me is my total 
want of all reason, will, or design in the 'business. I had neither 
the resolution to win Adele, the courage to do without her, the sensa 
to consider what was at last to come of it all, or the grace to thin ■ 
how disagreeable I was making myself at the time to everybcd 

1 Life of John Ruskin. 



THE LIFE OF JOHN RUSKIN 9 

about me. There was really no more capacity nor intelligence in me 
than in a just fledged owlet, or just open-eyed puppy, disconsolate 
at the existence of the moon."^ 

Evidently the marriage of Adele struck young Ruskin a hard 
blow. For nearly four years he had been a devoted and faithful 
lover. His devotion and hope were so deep and strong, that it seems 
to have seriously affected his health. Still, as Mr. Collingwood says, 
*'at twenty, young men do not die of love."^ 

Ruskin was, by this time, an author of fame, having written a 
number of poems of merit and he was in much demand for maga- 
zine articles. His illness did not check his passion for work. His 
parents designed him for a clergyman, and fondly looked forward 
to his bearing the disting-uished title of "Lord Bishop" of the Episco- 
pal Church, but subsequent changes in his religious experience 
would have made this impossible, even if his desires had not run in 
another direction. 

Perhaps the most highly esteemed prize at the University of 
Oxford was that known as the "Newdigate," and for this young 

1 PraeteHta, Vol. 1, Page 152. 

2 The following notes on the subject of lovers, written by Ruskin in his riper 
years, will be of interest in this connection : 

"First, a girl's proper confidant is her father. If there is any break whatever 
in her trust in him, from her infancy to her marriage, there is wrong somewhere, — 
often on his part, but most likely it is on hers ; by getting into the habit of talking 
with her girl-friends about what they have no business with, and her father much. 
What she is not inclined to tell her father, should be told to no one ; and, in nin« 
cases out of ten, not thought of by herself. 

"And I believe that few fathers, however wrong-headed or hard-hearted, would 
fail of answering the habitual and patient confidence of their child with true 
care for her. On the other hand, no father deserves, nor can he entirely and 
beautifully win, his daughter's confidence, unless he loves her better than he does 
himself, which is not always the case. But again here, the fault may not be 
all on papa's side. 

"In the second place, when a youth is fully in love with a girl, and feels that he 
is wise in loving her, he should at once tell her so plainly, and take his chance 
bravely, with other suitors. No lover should have the insolence to think of being 
accepted at once, nor should any girl have the cruelty to refuse at once; without 
severe reasons. If she simply doesn't like him, she may send him away for seven 
years or so, — he vowing to live on cresses, and wear sackcloth meanwhile, or 
the like penance: if she likes him a little, or thinks she might come to like him 
la time, she may let him stay near her, putting him always on sharp trial to see 
what stuff he is made of, and requiring, figuratively, as many lion-skins or giants* 
heads as she thinks herself worth. The whole meaning and power of true court- 
ship is Probation ; and it oughtn't to be shorter than three years at least — 
seven is, to my own mind, the orthodox time. And these relations between the 
young people should be openly and simply known, not to their friends only, but 
to everybody who has the least interest in them : and a girl worth anything ought 
to have always half a dozen or so of suitors under vow for her." — Fors, Letter 90. 



lo THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

Riiskin worked with a will. The first year of his contest for this 
laurel, he had for a competitor a young man of brilliant intellect 
who carried off the prize and who was afterwards known to the 
world as "Dean Stanley." The next year Ruskin again entered 
the race without success, but in the third effort, when, as yet, 
he was only twenty, he wrote "Salsette and Elephanta," a 
poem describing the dawn of Christianity in Hindustan, and with 
this he won the coveted prize. With the publication of this poem, 
according to Collingwood, it seemed that "he had found his vocation 
and was well on the high road to fame as a poet." By the time he 
reached his majority he had already written more verse and prose- 
poetry that live than fall to the lot of many a first-rate literary man 
in a life-time. More than twenty of his works were published from 
1834 to 1840, while he was a student at the University, from which 
he graduated at twenty-three. 

At Oxford, during these years, young Ruskin met many who 
afterwards ranked among the most distinguished men of his time. 
Such men as Dr. Buckland, the eminent geologist. Sir Henry Ac- 
land, the famous physician. Dean Liddell, Sir Charles Newton, 
Charles Darwin and Dean Stanley. William Ewart Gladstone had 
passed through Oxford a little before Ruskin's time. 

From the standpoint of this volume no incident of Ruskin's 
youth is of greater interest than the Scripture training which he 
received from his mother. Mrs. Ruskin was a rare woman, of 
strong intellect, very decided piety, and a theology of the Scotch- 
Presbyterian order of that time. Her ideals were of the loftiest, 
both for herself as a mother, and for her son as a man. No care was 
too self-sacrificing, no training too insistent, if only she could lead her 
child into the pathway of right thought and action. The story of 
Bible drill under this painstaking mother is told by Ruskin in 
later years and he seems to dwell upon it fondly, for he tells the 
same incidents more than once. The following list of chapters 
which he gives in Fors in 1873 he repeats in Praeterita in 1885 : 

"Walter Scott and Pope's Homer were reading of my own selection, 
but my mother forced me, by steady daily toil, to learn long chapters 
of the Bible by heart ; as well as to read it every syllable through, 
aloud, hard names and all, from Genesis to the Apocalypse, about 
once a year ; and to that discipline, — patient, accurate, and resolute, 
I owe, not only a knowledge of the book, which I find occasionally 
serviceable, but of my general power of taking pains, and the best 



THE LIFE OF JOHN RUSKIN ii 

of my taste in literature. . . . Once knowing the 32nd of Deuter- 
onomy, the 119th Psalm, the 15th of 1st Corinthians, the Sermon 
on the Mount, and most of the Apocalypse, every syllable by heart, 
and having always a way of thinking with myself what words 
meant, it was possible for me, even in the foolishest times of youth, 
to write entirely superficial or formal English." .... "I opened 
my Bible just now, yellow with age, and flexible but not unclean 
with much use, except that the lower corners of the pages at 8th of 
first Kings, and Deut. 32nd, are worn somewhat thin and dark, 
the learning of those two chapters having cost me much pains. My 
mother's list of the chapters with which, learned every syllable 
accurately, she established my soul in life, has fallen out of it. 
. . . . I will take what indulgence the sagacious reader will give 
me for printing the list thus accidentally occurrent : 

Exodus, Chaps. 15 and 20, 2 Samuel, Chap. 1, verse 17 to the 
end. 1 Kings, 8. Psalms, 23, 32, 90, 91, 103, 112, 119, 139. 
Proverbs, Chaps. 2, 3, 8, 12. Isaiah, Chap. 58. Matthew, Chaps, 
5, 6, 7.^ Acts, Chap. 26. 1 Cor. Chaps. 13, 15. James, Chap. 4. 
Revelation, Chaps. 5, 6." 

In Prseterita he tells us that as soon as he was able to read with 
fluency his mother began a course of Bible work with him, which 
never ceased till he went to Oxford. 

"She read alternate verses with me," he says, "watching, at 
first, every intonation of my voice, and correcting the false 
ones till she made me understand the verse, if within my 
reach, rightly, and energetically. It might be beyond me 
altogether ; that she did not care about ; but she made sure that 
as soon as I got hold of it at all, I should get hold of it by the right 
end. In this way she began with the first verse of Genesis, and went 
straight through, to the last verse of the Apocalypse; hard names, 
numbers, Levitioal law, and all ; and began again in Genesis the 
next day. If a name was hard, the better the exercise in pronuncia- 
tion, — if a chapter was tiresome, the better lesson in patience, — if 
loathsome, the better lesson in faith that there was some use in its 
being so outspoken." To this training he adds: — "I owe the first 
cultivation of my ear in sound." 

If, as has been said,^ this was severe discipline reflecting upon the 
"judgment and discretion" of his mother, it may be answered that 
it was fully justified in the after life of Ruskin, for he himself refers 
to it, again and again, as laying the foundation of much that was 
best in his life and work. Indeed he defended his mother against 
some such criticisms, long before Mr. Hobson wrote his book. He 
says : 

1 John Ruskin, Social Reformer, J. A. Hobson. 



12 TEE RELIGION OF HVSKW 

"After taking me at least six times through the Bible, she 
was not afraid of plain words to, or for, me ; . . . . Her Punlan- 
ism was clear enough in common sense to see that, while Shak- 
speare and Burns lay open on the table all day, there was no reason 
for much mystery with Byron. . My mother , . had sym- 
pathy with every passion, as well as every virtue, of true woman- 
hood. . . And there was one feature in my mother's character 
which must be here asserted at once, to put an end to the notion 
of which I see traces in some newspaper comments on my past 
descriptions of her, that she was in any wise like Esther's religious 
aunt in 'Bleak House.' Far on the contrary, there was a hearty, 
frank, and sometimes even irrepressible laugh in my mother! 
. . . . If, however, there was the least bitterness or irony in a 
jest, my mother did not like it."^ 

Thus we may see that the elementary food upon which the child- 
mind was daily fed entered into the moral and mental life of young 
Kuskin, developing and sustaining that rare quality of intellect 
with which he was endowed at his very birth. The child, well-born, 
was also well trained. The promise of his future lay not only in 
his heredity, genius and transcendent spirit, but, perhaps, in even 
greater measure, in that never failing supply of the richest of -all 
literature, — in that spiritual perception imparted to him through 
his familiarity with the most spiritual of Bible Truths and by the 
expository teaching of his mother, — illumined by her own rare 
faith and love. 

iPraeterita, Chap. 8. 



II 

RUSKIN— THE MAN. 

"Among tKe heroic souls who have sought to recover the lost paradise and 
recapture the glory of an undefiled and blessed world stands John Ruskin, oft 
an apostle of gentle words that heal like medicines, and sometimes a prophet of 
Elijah-like sternness and grandeur, consuming man's sins with words of flame. 
.... Unlike Burns, and Byron, Shelley and Goethe, no passion ever poi- 
soned his purpose and no vice ever disturbed the working of his genius. What he 
taught in theory he first was in practice. . . . Unlike that rich young man who 
went from Christ sorrowful, John Ruskin gladly forsook all his possessions to 
follow Jesus." — Newell Dwight Hillis in *'Great Books as Life Teachers." 

In his later years Ruskin did not hold his University career in 
high regard. "The whole time I was there," he says, "my mind was 
simply in the state of a squash before 'tis a peaspod, — and remained 
so yet a year or two afterward, I grieve to say."* Whether this 
was a sort of ironical expression of dissatisfied contempt for the 
measure of his attainments, or simply an effect of his more morbid 
moods, we cannot say, but certainly these reflections upon his stu- 
dent days do not represent a just view of the facts as we have them. 
He was only nineteen when the Publisher of Loudon's Magazine 
wrote to his father: — "Your son is certainly the greatest genius that 
ever it has been my fortune to become acquainted with," and, not- 
withstanding his protracted sickness, young Ruskin graduated with 
honors before he was twenty-three years of age. 

He was not, however, the sort of young fellow to enter into in- 
stant sympathy with the life of the average college man with whom 
he was thrown into contact by his father's choice. Entered as a 
"Gentleman Commoner" of Christ Church College of the Univer- 
sity, he found himself among the sons of the aristocratic families of 
England. "These young lords and squires who rode races, betted, 
shirked all work and got into scrapes, naturally regarded the queer 

^ Two circumstances seem to lend a little color to this self-disparagement. He 
did not win the coveted Newdigate prize until the third attempt and when visit- 
ing at Rome after reaching his majority he fell sick of a fever which lost him a 
full year of his time. 

13 



14 TEE RELIGWN OF RUSKIN 

poet as a butt rather than an equal. "^ But there was something 
in young Ruskin, which speedily melted these prejudices. "He 
was one of the gentlest creatures ever seen in Oxford, more 
like a girl than a man, who was looked upon as a joke until a few 
men perceived his genius and the rest became aware of his goodness. 
His fine temper, his wit, his mastery of drawing, his skill in chess, 
his hospitality, and superb sherry, won for him the young bloods 
who at last agreed to regard him as something quite of an order by 
himself."^ 

Various writers have drawn pictures of Ruskin, as he was at this 
time, and they.are all in substantial harmony with May Russell Mit- 
ford's sketch: — "tall, fair and slender, with a gentle playfulness and 
a sort of pretty waywardness that was quite charming." 

Here is a pen portrait, drawn by his friend and biographer as he 
saw him when first introduced to him : 

"He received me with radiant courtesy when I told him that I 
had sought him to hear more of his thoughts about Labor and 
Wealth. I recall him as a man of slight figure, rather tall, except 
that he had a stoop from the shoulders, with a countenance of singu- 
lar mobility and expressiveness. His eyes were blue and very keen, 
full of fire and meaning ; the hair was brown, luxuriant, and curly ; 
the brows rather marked, and with somewhat shaggy eyebrows. The 
lips were full of movement and character, in spite of the injury 
caused by a dog's bite in childhood. His countenance was eminent- 
ly spirituel — winning, magnetic, and radiant."^ 

Mr. Collingwood has preserved a Reporter's portrait of him, 
when lecturing in Edinburgh in 1853. Ruskin was then thirty- 
four, and the sketch affords us a view of the manner and style of the 
lecturer as well as the face and form of the man : 

"Before you can see the lecturer you must get into the hall and 
that is not an easy matter, .... the crowd in waiting, not only 
fills the passage, but occupies the pavement, in front of the entrance, 
and overflows into the road, .... the door beside the platform 
opens and a thin gentleman, with light hair, a stiff white cravat, 
dark overcoat with velvet collar, walking, too, with a slight stoop, 
goes up to the desk, and looking round with a self-possessed and 
somewhat formal air, .... 'Dark hair, pale face, and massive 
marble brow, — that is my ideal of Mr. Ruskin,' said a young lady 
near us. This proved to be quite a fancy portrait, as unlike the 
reality as could well be imagined, Mr. Ruskin has light sand- 

^ "John Ruskin." Harrison. 



THE LIFE OF JOHN RUSKIN 15 

colored hair; his face is more red than pale; the mouth well cut, 
with a good deal of decision in its curve, though somewhat wanting 
in sustained dignity and strength; an aquiline nose; his forehead 
by no means broad or massive, but the brows full and well bound 
together; the eye we could not see, in consequence of the shadows 
that fell upon his countenance from the lights overhead, but we are 
sure that the poetry and passion we looked for, almost in vain, 
in other features must be there."^ 

In a volume of Letters, is a description of Ruskin's "manifold 
pleasant ways; his graceful and delightful manner — bright, gentle, 
delicately courteous; the lyric melody of his voice — ^more intensely 
spiritual than any voice I ever heard. He is a swift observer and 
acute. Not talkative, but ever willing to be interested in things, 
and to throw gleams of his soul's sunlight over them ; original in his 
dazzling idealism. Forever thinking on 'whatsoever things are pure, 
and lovely, and of good report,' annihilating in the intense whit« 
heat of his passionate contempt and hatred, all vile, dark, hateful 
things. They are not — cannot be. They are lies, negations, blanks, 
nonentities. God is — and there is none else beside Him. So I wend 
my way home by a circuit through the cottage domain, dreaming of 
nothing but Ruskin and the glory of his soul, and the ideals he 
would have us worship."^ 

Canon Scott Holland wrote of him, after his death, in the follow- 
ing terms: 

"Who that had ever seen him could forget John Ruskin? He 
had the touch that goes straight to the heart. He came up to one 
eo confidentially, so appealingly, with that wistful look in his gray- 
glinting eyes, which seemed to say, 'I never find anybody who quite 
understands me, but I still hope and think that you will.' .... 
He somehow moved one as with the delicate tenderness of a woman ; 
and he felt frail, as if the roughness of the world would hurt and 
break him; and one longed to shelter him from all that was ugly 
and cruel. "^ 

And again, his biographer wrote of him, at the time of his death : 

"He was the very mirror of courtesy, with an indescribable charm 
of spontaneous lovingness. It was neither the old-world gracious- 
ness of Mr. Gladstone, nor the stately simplicity of Tourgenief. — 
It was simply the irrepressible bubbling up of a bright nature, full 

* Life of John Ruskin.. 

2 Raskin at Hawarden in "Letters to M. O. and H. O." 

3 Paper by Holland in "Letters to M. G. and H. G" 



i6 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

to the brim with enthusiasm, chivalry, and affection. No boy could 
blurt out all that he enjoyed and wanted with more artless freedom ; 
no girl could be more humble, modest and unassuming. His ideas, 
his admiration, and his fears seemed to flash out of his spirit and 
escape his control. But (in private life) it was always what he 
loved, not what he hated, that aroused his interest. Now all this was 
extraordinary in one who, in writing, treated what he hated and 
scorned with real savage violence, who used such bitter words, even 
in letters to his best friends, who is usually charged with inordinate 
arrogance and conceit. The world must judge his writings as they 
stand. I 01 n only say, that, in personal intercourse, I have never 
known him, in full health, betrayed into a harsh word, or an ungra- 
cious phrase, or an unkind judgment, or a trace of egotism. Face 
to face, he was the humblest, most willing and patient of listeners, 
always deferring to the judgment of others in things wherein he 

did not profess to be a student, and anxious to learn To 

paraphrase an absurd epigram of Oliver Goldsmith's talk and his 
books, it might be said of Ruskin that he talked like an angel and 
wrote as if he were one of the Major Prophets."* 

These sketches of Ruskin's personal traits would be incomplete as 
portraiture without the perspective which Ruskin himself furnishes : 

"Readers should be clearly aware of one peculiarity in the man- 
ner of my writing in Fors which might otherwise much mislead 
them: — namely, that if they will enclose in brackets with their 
pen, passages of evident irony, all the rest of the book is written with 
absolute seriousness and literalness of meaning. The violence, or 
grotesque aspect, of a statement may seem as if I were mocking; 
but this comes mainly of my endeavour to bring the absolute truth 
out into pure crystalline structure, unmodified by disguise of cus- 
tom, or obscurity of language ; for the result of that process is con- 
tinually to reduce the facts into a form so contrary, if theoretical, 
to our ordinary impressions, and so contrary, if moral, to our ordi- 
nary practice, that the straightforward statement of them looks like 
a jest. But every such apparent jest will be found, if you think of 
it, a pure, very dreadful, and utterly imperious, veracity. "- 

The apparent contradictions in Ruskin never mean that he was, 
in the least, insincere ; for no one who knew him, or ever studied 
his life and work could doubt the transparent honesty of all he said 
and did. He was not the man to be silent in presence of any evil, 
real or imaginary. He was prone to lay the ax to the root of the 
tree, when it once appeared to him as corrupt. Hence he often 

* Harrison. 

2 Fors. Vol. III. Letter xlvii. 



THE LIFE OF JOHN RUSKIN 17 

travelled out of tli« path which the world oame to regard as legiti- 
mately his. Yet, in doing this, he was always on the side of justice 
and truth, as he saw them. 

After graduating at Oxford, Ruskin gave himself but little rest, 
although he had, several times, been warned by sickness. All his 
studies were pursued with a purpose and a passion. He was never 
contented with a mere passive or receptive state of mind which takes 
in knowledge for its own sake, much less for the sake of 'completing 
a task. Everything he did bad some purpose in view for which the 
task was but a preparation. 

As a thinker, he was absolutely independent, — indifferent to cur- 
rent opinion and conventionalities. As we have seen, he was gen- 
tle and kind in his personal contact with men and women, but he 
was severe in his written attacks upon everything which seemed to 
him to be false or erroneous, and he was absolutely honest in his 
criticisms of the work of the most influential people, including his 
closest friends.* He had <a humble conception of the merits of his 
own work although he was 'commonly regarded as an egotist. "No 
description," he says, "that I have given of anything is worth 
four lines of Tennyson, and in serious thought, my half-pages are 
generally worth as much as a single sentence of his, or of Carlyle's.^ 

Few men enjoyed a closer acquaintance with the great minds of 
his time than did Ruskin. Carlyle fairly doted on him and praised 

1 We have no authority for the following rather humorous story, other than a 
newspaper clipping, but it serves to illustrate the storms which Ruskin's criti- 
cisms often raised, even among his friends: 

"Whistler, the painter, once brought suit against John Ruskin for writing of 
him: *I have seen and heard much of cockney impudence before now; but never 
exi)ected to hear a coxcomb ask 200 guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the 
public's face.' One of the most amusing features of the trial that followed the 
publication of this criticism was the exhibition in court of some of the 'noc- 
turnes' and 'arrangements' which were the subject of the suit. The jury of re- 
spectable citizens, whose knowledge of art was probably limited, was expected to 
pass judgment on these paintings. Mr. Whistler's counsel held up one of the 
pictures. 'Here, gentlemen,' said he, 'is one of the works which have been ma- 
ligned.' 'Pardon me,* interposed Mr. Ruskin's lawyer, 'you have that picture 
upside down.' 'No such thing.* *0h, but it is so,' continued Ruskin's coun- 
sel ; 'I remember it in the Grosvenor gallery, where it was hung the other way 
about.' The altercation ended in the correctness of view of Ruskin's lawyer being 
sustained and the fact that Mr. Whistler's own counsel did not know which was 
the top or bottom of the picture had more to do with Ruskin's virtual victory 
than all the arguments of counsel or the evidence of art experts. The jury 
awarded the artist one farthing damages, which he hung on his watch chain and 
used to exhibit with sardonic pride." 

'The Two Paths— Appendix. 



i8 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

his work in the most flattering terms, and that is saying a good deal 
of such a gruff old spokesman as the Chelsea philosopher. He was 
intimate with the Brownings; Mrs. Browning wrote: — "I like Mr. 
Ruskin very much and so does Rohert: very gentle, yet earnest — 
refined and truthful, I like him much. We count him among 
the valuable acquaintances made this year." Mr. Collingwood has 
published several lengthy letters which passed between Browning 
and Ruskin and also between Carlyle and Ruskin, exhibiting a rare 
intimacy between them. 

Ruskin was tenacious of opinion, yet ready to change, and honest 
to 'avow it, when confronted with evidence. He tells us that "for a 
long time I used to say, in all my elementary hooks, that except in 
a graceful and minor way, women could not paint or draw. I am 
beginning, lately, to bow myself to the much more delightful con- 
viction that nobody else can."* 

One has only to read "Sesame and Lilies" to see how he held 
women In esteem with a touch of reverence in it. His ideal places 
them on a plane far higher than that of man, in all that is pure and 
spiritual. Not that he would admit the thought, or allow the word, 
of "superiority'' in either sex. Man and woman are two hemi- 
spheres, differing in form and character, but each necessary to the 
other, and both necessary to make a world. "Each has what the 
other has not; each completes the other and is completed by the 
other; they in nothing alike, and the happiness and perfection of 
both depends on each asking and receiving from the other what 
the other only can give." Thus Ruskin is in full accord with 
Tennyson, in his memorable poem, "The Princess." 

"Woman is not undevelopt man, 
But diverse : could we make her as the man, 
Sweet love were slain : his dearest bond is this, 
Not like to like, but like in difference 



Nor equal, nor unequal : each fulfills 

Defect in each, and always thought in thought, 

Purpose in purpose, will in will, they grow." 

Woman is queen and as such is regnant in her realm, but she is 
not, and cannot be king, any more than man can be queen : 

"A woman's rank 
Lies in the fulness of her womanhood 
Therein alone she Is royal." — 'Oeorge EUot. 

*The Art of England: Lecture 1. 



THE LIFE OF JOHN RUSKIN 19 

In his portrayal of woman, Ruskin claims to be on the side of 
"the greatest, the wisest, the purest hearted of all ages." "Shaks- 
peare," he says, "has no heroes, — only heroines. . . . Othello would 
have been one, if his simplicity had not been so great as to leave 
him the prey of every base practice round him ; but he is the only 
example even approximating to the heroic type. Coriolanus, 
Caesar, Antony, stand in flawed strength, and fall by their vani- 
ties. Hamlet is indolent and drowsily speculative; Romeo an im- 
patient boy ; the Merchant of Venice languidly submissive to adverse 
fortune; Kent, in King Lear, is entirely noble at heart, but too 
rough and unpolished to be of true use at the critical time, and he 
sinks into the office of a servant only. . . . Whereas there is 
hardly a play that has not a perfect woman in it, steadfast in grave 
hope and errorless purpose; Cordelia, Desdemona, Isabella, Her- 
mione, Imogen, Queen Katherine, Perdita, Sylvia, Viola, Rosalind, 
Helena, and last, and perhaps loveliest, Virgilia, all are perfect. 
Then observe, the catastrophe of every play is caused by the folly or 
fault of a man; the redemption, if there be any, is by the wisdom 
and virtue of a woman, and failing that, there is none."^ 

Ruskin, however, was not an advocate in advance of his times, 
of what is popularly understood as "Woman's Rights." The pres- 
ent writer believes that sex should not be a qualification, nor a 
disqualification, for electoral rights and privileges. But, as Dr. 
Dawson^ says: Ruskin "reminds us that woman may be emanci- 
pated in so rough and wrong a fashion that the bloom of virgin 
grace may be wasted in the process, and the true charm of woman- 
hood may perish. 

Among the men of his class there was not, in all England, so 
perfect an example of pure unselfishness. Other men were doing 
great and good things for the relief of the poor and oppressed. 
Shaftesbury, the prince of philanthropy; Peabody, who set the 
fashion, at great personal expense, of providing homes for work- 
men, having the comforts of civilization without its extortions, at 
leaBt so far as rent was concerned; and John Howard, the self- 
sacrificing prison reformer. But John Ruskin, as we shall see in 
chapter IV. of this sketch of his life, gave himself and his fortune, 
without stint or measure to others. Reared among aristocrats, edu- 
cated in the proudest of universities, petted and praised by a proud 

' Sesame and Lilies. — Of Queen's Gardens. 

2 "Literary Leaders of Modern England," W. J. Dawson. 



20 THE RELIGION OF RUSK IN 

father and a doting mother, he possessed rare opportunities for 
selfish enjoyment, and had every thing that usually tends to per- 
sonal vanity and self-love. But he was a man of intense sympathy, 
— it may be said that he was a man of sorrows — a martyr-spirit. 
Mr. E. T. Cook, the authorized editor of Ruskin's Works says, "He 
was like the living conscience of the modern world, and felt acutely 
the wrongs and wrong-doings of others. In no age could his sen- 
sitive heart have escaped these sorrows." Very keenly he felt every 
seeming failure to reach the world of grief. "It's not my work that 
drives me mad," he said, "but the sense that nothing comes of it." 
His chivalry was irresistible and exultant. He stood valiantly for 
truth against all forms of evil, not waiting for them to assail him; 
he acted aggressively and without a suggestion of compromise. 
What he believed to be wrong he resisted and regarded his con- 
flicts as stimulants to virtue. Not that he cared for the joy of 
conquest; in this also he was unselfish, rejoicing in the triumph of 
right for its own sake. 

In every age there has been an occasional man who found him- 
self alone in the world — not because he dwelt in a wilderness, or 
was lost in a crowd, but because he was original, singular, unique. 
The great soul must ever reach higher and go farther than the 
ordinary man. Friends may accompany him part of the way — as 
did the disciples of Jesus in Gethsemane, but He must go "a little 
further." The true hero must always be prepared to go alone. He 
is like an occasional pine-tree in the forest, whose head reaches 
above all others, — facing the winds and meeting the storm, alone. 
We try to classify such a man, but he cannot be classed. No sect or 
party can hodd him. He is like a mighty mountain peak, higher 
than the clouds, holding fellowship with sun and stars. 

Ruskin was of the prophetic order of mind — that rare insight 
into the heart and spirit of truth which, in Old Testament times, 
was called the spirit of the seer. He believed in Nature in all its 
heights and depths, and like the Psalmist, delighted in communion 
with it. Loyalty to duty was, with him, directly related to pleasure ; 
indeed he could not conceive of pleasure at the expense of duty. 
Justice was more to him than charity. "It is the law of heaven," 
he said, "that you will not be able to judge what is wise or easy,, 
unless you are first resolved to judge what is just, and do it. . . . 
Do justice and judgment, that's your Bible order, that's the service 
of God. The one divine work, the one needed sacrifice is to do 



THE LIFE OF JOHN RUSK IN 21 

justice. Nay, but you will say, 'Charity is greater than Justice.' 
Yes, it is greater, it is the summit of Justice, it is the temple of 
which Justice is the foundation." And again he says, "No human 
actions were ever intended by the Maker of Men to be guided by 
balances of expediency but by balances of Justice.^ There is a 
gap of two years (1847-49) in Ruskin's autobiography, as given in 
Praeterita. During that period two events occurred about which 
he preferred to say nothing. These were his marriage and a serious 
and dangerous illness. Several years had gone by since a young 
lady — a daughter of an old Scotch friend of the Ruskins — visited 
them at their home at Heme Hill, London. The young lady, 
whose name was Euphemia Chalmers Gray, was strikingly beauti- 
ful. In the course of her acquaintance with Ruskin, which was 
mixed with flirtation, she challenged him to write her a fairy story, 
probably thinking it a good joke to impose such a task on a man 
of serious mind. But Ruskin accepted the challenge and the story 
of "The King of the Golden River" is the result. For reasons of 
their own, the elder Ruskins advised their son to marry this lady, 
and on the tenth of April, 1848, they were married. Almost im- 
mediately after the marriage he contracted a severe cold and for 
a time his life seemed to be in danger. Nothing is said of this 
marriage in any of Ruskin's letters. His bride is not mentioned 
in his autobiographical writings. Whatever may have been the 
cause of it, certainly this union was not attended with happiness on 
either side. 

Ruskin was far too generous a man to parade any fault he may 
have found in his wife. He simply drew a veil of silence over the 
whole matter. Had it been left to him the world would never have 
heard of it. Only five years had passed away, when Millais, the 
celebrated artist, while a guest at their home, painted the portraits 
of both Mr. and Mrs. John Ruskin. Then followed, in quick suc- 
cession, the return of Mrs. Ruskin to the home of her parents, an 
appeal, in a Scotch court, for a nullity of their tie, in which Ruskin 
acquiesced, and the marriage of the beautiful wife to Millais. This 
sad ending of his domestic life is, perhaps, without a parallel in 
all the records of family tragedies. That any man could be so finely 
constituted — so self-renouncing, as to sacrifice himself, in such a 
way, rather than contest the peace and desires of others is a very 

1 Time and Tide : Essay I. 



82 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

striking and singular instance of pure unselfishness. The experi- 
ence as a whole, from the courtship to marriage, and from the wed- 
ding day to the close of the tragedy, was a full translation of the 
sentiment expressed in lines which he wrote in "Time and Tide," 
fifteen years later: 

"And there, with many a blissful tear, 
I vowed to love and prayed to wed 
The maiden who had grown so dear: — 
Thanked God, who had set her in my path 
And promised, as I hoped to win, 
I never would sully my faith 
By the least selfishness or sin ; 
Whatever in her sight I'd seem 
I'd really be ; I ne'er would blend, 
With my delight in her, a dream 
'Twould change her cheek to comprehend; 
And, if she wished it, would prefer 
Another's to my own success ; 
And always seek the best for her 
With unofficious tenderness." 

After the home of his childhood there seems to have been no 
domestic haven for this noble and loving man. His last love was a 
young lady pupil which ended almost in a tragedy. He was fifty- 
three ; she was less than half that age. According to Mr. Cook, she 
was an Irish girl whose name was Rose LaTouche. Ruskin had 
known "Rosie," as he calls her, in his reminiscences, from her child- 
hood. She, with her brother and sister, became his pupil when he 
was forty and she nine. But at fifty-three and twenty-two, respec- 
tively, the disparity did not embarrass them, and he proposed mar- 
riage to her. His friends favored the proposed union and hoped for 
his happiness. But she was deeply religious, of a somewhat 
morbid temperament, and her religion was of the most pronounced 
orthodox type. She was, therefore, shocked at Ruskin's liberal 
views, and perhaps, still more, at his severely critical mind, so, al- 
though she loved him sincerely, she refused him. Ill-health after- 
wards attended her, and three years later she died. Her death 
was the greatest grief of Ruskin's life. When past seventy, he 
wandered back in memory over the scenes of this love. In his last 
letter in Praeterita he tells of "Elysian walks with Joanna,^ and 
paradaisical, with Rosie, under the peach-blossom branches of the 
little glittering stream which I had paved with crystal for them. 
Happiest time for all of us that ever were to be." 

1 Joanna was Ruskin's cousin, and Arthur Severn her husband, with whom he 
lived and was cared for with great tenderness in his last few years. 



THE LIFE OF JOHN RUSKIN 13 

Was it any wonder that this great, sensitive soul, so long deprived 
of the love and domestic felicity for which he panted as "the hart 
panteth after the water-brooks;" struggling against repeated attacks 
of ill-health, and then, plunging, from enforced rest, into turbu- 
lent floods of warring elements, and pouring out all the forces of 
his intensely active brain into human service, should reach the 
limit of his physical strength long years before he came to his 
last days? Insomnia and nightmare were followed by mental 
and physical collapse. In 1878 he was struck down with brain- 
fever, from which, after a long illness, — he partially recovered. 

In his passion for work he wrote much and designed more. He 
planned a colossal library of sixty-nine volumes. "John Ruskin 
would think in encyclopedias, comprising Man and Nature in one 
library," says Frederick Harrison. In 1879 he was compelled 
by the "state of his health to resign his Oxford professor- 
ship, and at sixty he retired to quiet rest and study in his beauti- 
ful cottage home at Brantwood on Coniston Lake." Here he 
enjoyed the home comforts and the care and devotion of Mrs. 
Severn and family. 

But "rest and study," with Ruskin meant only, that in a short 
time, he would get up the steam again and plunge into the most 
strenuous work. "I won't believe," he wrote, "any stories about 
over-work. It's impossible when one's in good heart and at really 
good things. I've a lot of nice things to do, but the heart fails — 
after lunch particularly." Heart and hand did fail again. In 1882 
he had another attack of brain fever, but was able to travel in Aug- 
ust, and to work at French churches, and in the Alps. Strange 
to say, by the end of the year he so far recovered that he was once 
more ready for public life. "The attacks of brain fever had passed 
over him like passing storms, leaving a clear sky." 

And so in 1883 he was again in the professor's chair at Oxford, 
working with his old enthusiasm, and in 1884 he delivered the 
course of lectures which he published under the title of "The Storm- 
Cloud of the Nineteenth Century;" and then again he suddenly 
resigned his professorship. 

This practically closed his active life. Mr. Collingwood, who was 
Buskin's chosen secretary and biographer, is best qualified to speak 
of him at this time. He says : "Over-stimulus in childhood, intense 
application to work in youth and middle age, under conditions 
of discouragement, both public and private, which would have been 



34 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

fatal to many another man; and this too, not merely hard worE 
of an intensely emotional nature, involving, in his view at least, 
wide issues of life and death, in which he was another Jacob, wrest- 
ling with the angel in the wilderness, another Savonarola, imploring 
reconciliation between God and man. . . . These attacks of men- 
tal disease, which at his recall to Oxford, seemed to have been safely 
distanced, after his resignation began again at more frequent in- 
tervals. Crash after crash of tempest fell upon him — clearing away 
for awhile, only to return with fiercer fury, until they left him 
beaten down and helpless at last, to learn that he must accept the 
lesson and bow before the storm. Like another prophet who had 
been very jealous for the Lord God of Hosts, he was to feel tempest 
and earthquake and fire pass over him, before hearing the still 
small voice that bade him once more take courage, and live in 
quietness and confidence, for the sake of those whom he had for- 
gotten, when he cried, *I, even I only am left.' " 

And Mr. Harrison, his other biographer, says : "But a year or so 
before his death, I found him in his quiet Brantford home — to 
look at, just like Lear in the last scene, but perfectly reposeful, 
gentle and happy, taking the air of the fells with delight, joining 
in games, or reading with the family at intervals; . . . silently 
and for long intervals together gazing with a far-off look of yearn- 
ing, but no longer of eagerness, at the blue hills, across the rippling 
lake, as if — half child again, half wayworn pilgrim — he saw there 
the delectable mountains 'where the wicked cease from troubling 
and the weary are at rest.' " 

Certainly the man, Ruskin, had well earned the rest which came 
to him with his closing years. A prophet of the nineteenth cen- 
tury, he had preached, unwaveringly, the gospel of sincerity with a 
passion unequalled, and with a power hardly surpassed by his great 
contemporary and friend— Thomas Carlyle. In those notes of quiet 
ecstasy which his soul delighted in, as he shared the domestic peace 
denied him in his years of service and battle, his spiritual vision 
was not impaired, nor his faith weaker. One can almost hear him 
as he sits in the gloaming of a long eventide, singing with Brown- 
ings 

"Grow old along with me ; 

The best is yet to be, 
The last of life for which the first was made; 

Our times are in His hand. 

Who saith : *A whole I planned, 
Youth shews but half ; trust God ; see all, nor be afraid !' " 



Ill 

RUSKIN— ART CRITIC AND AUTHOR. 

True criticism of art never can consist in the mere application of rules ; it 
can be just only when it is founded on quick sympathy with the innumerable 
instincts and changeful efforts of human nature, chastened and guided by un- 
changing love of all things that God has created to be beautiful, and pronounced 
to be good." — Mod. Painters, Vol. 3, Chap. 2. 

Ruskin is best known to the world of literature as Art Critic, and 
beyond all doubt, he stands unrivalled in this character. There 
have been artists many, and art critics not a few, but to our author 
is commonly conceded first place in this realm. The encyclopedias 
refer to him as "the most eminent art critic" and librarians so class 
his works.\ Collingwood devotes the whole of Book II. of his biog- 
raphy, comprising nearly one hundred pages, to Ruskin's work as 
art critic. And, in truth, it is in art that his best literary work 
finds its base of form and thought, notwithstanding that he travels, 
often, over fields that are wide apart, for inspiration and applica- 
tion. His writings are truly encyclopedic, not only in volume, but 
also in variety of subject and treatment. Yet they are entirely 
original and have opened to the world a new school of thought and 
criticism.^ 

Starting out with the broadest view of his subject, he says: 

"I w^ant a definition of art wide enough to include all its varieties 
of aim. The art is greatest, which conveys to the mind of the 
spectator, by any means whatsoever, the greatest number of the 
greatest ideas, and I call an idea great in proportion as it is re- 
ceived by a higher faculty of the mind, and as it more fully 

1 "John Ruskin is the greatest interpreter of art the English world has ever 
known." — Jenkin Lloyd Jones. 

2 The Literary Editor of the New York Tribune has kindly furnished th? writer 
an extract from a review of one of Ruskin's works which appeared in the Tribune 
fifty-seven years ago, viz.: July 13, 1849, as follows: 

"He (Ruskin) is so clearly master of his subject, which seems, indeed, to form 
a portion of his deepest life and being, he writes so sincerely from inspiration of 
a large interior experience, that we cannot but think it wiser, as well as more 
modest, to place ourselves to him in the relation of learners, rather than of 
critics." 

25 



36 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

occupies, and in occupying, exercises and exalts, the faculty by which 
it is received. 

"If this then be the definition of great art, that of a great artist 
naturally follows. He is the greatest artist who has embodied, in 
the sum of his works, the greatest number of the greatest ideas." — 
Modern Painters, Vol. 1, Chap. 2. 

This definition Ruskin nobly interpreted in his own work, for he 
was an artist before he ventured to criticise art. And every piece 
of work that came from his hand, and every criticism of the work of 
others was subjected to these standards. There could be no beauty 
without truth and no work that does not represent the character of 
the soul as well as of the brain. When men asked, "Have I produced 
something that will pay, and something calculated cunningly to 
deceive the eye, so that I may obtain a larger payment for it than 
I have justly earned?" instead of the question, ''Is this thing that 
I have made as sound and efficient a thing as it is possible for me 
to produce?" they are essentially and radically dishonest. 

With such a standard Ruskin was eminently qualified for the 
function of critic, and only such a man is. He w^ho holds up a 
poem, or a painting, or any piece of work to the light, must him- 
self be true. Praise or censure of any work for favor, or for a price 
alone, is not criticism — it is flattery or calumny — in either case 
false and worthless. 

And then, too, Ruskin insisted, not only that truth is truth, but 
that truth is beauty, and that there is no real beauty in any thing 
that maketh a lie. Falsehood is varnish, paint is a coat only, and 
may hide rottenness and hideousness. The single column in tem- 
ple or porch must be straight and true, or it is not a thing of beauty. 
The beauty of the butterfly — of every bird and every leaf and 
flower; and of every shade of color in foliage is an expression of 
truth. Nature hates a lie as it abominates a vacuum. It was one of 
the articles of his faith that ugliness is the product of sin, and that 
truth and beauty are eternally wedded. "A beautiful thing may 
exist but for a moment, as a reality — it exists forever as a testi- 
mony The law of beauty (for us) depends on the laws 

of Christ. On all the beautiful features of men and women, through- 
out the ages are written the solemnities and majesty of the law they 
knew, with the charity and meekness of their obedience; on all 
unbeautiful features are written either ignorance of the law, or the 
malice and insolence of the disobedience."^ 

1 Art of England. Led. III. 



THE LIFE OF JOHN RUSKIN 27 

Ruskin's soul was fired with the spirit of Eternal Truth. He 
could hate intensely, but he hated only evil things. Shams, hypoc- 
risy, and every form of falsehood aroused him to anger. Oppres- 
sion and all forms of injustice called him to battle. It was the neg- 
lect and the absence of fairness, to say nothing of the injustice, to- 
wards a great Master of the art of painting, that kindled the fire in 
him at the very beginning of his life-work. Contemptuous criti- 
cism on Turner appeared in an article in Blackwood's Magazine in 
1843, and it evoked the "black anger" of young Ruskin. And 
the persistent, heroic, and triumphant defence of Turner, which 
then began and did not stop until the fifth volume of Modern 
Painters was published, was the crown of Ruskin's work as a mas- 
ter of analysis and controversy. 

Perhaps Ruskin himself would not have desired and could not 
have suggested, a more fitting monument to his own self-sacrificing 
and patient labors on behalf of art than the securing to the world 
the magnificent collection of Turner's landscapes and drawings, on 
free view in the National Gallery of London. Mr. Turner be- 
queathed the whole of these works to the Nation, with Mr. Ruskin 
as one of the executors. This included about 19,000 drawings,^ most 
of which, however, were in a state of confusion — unmounted and 
partly spoiled. "Four hundred of these were extricated from chaos, 
and with infinite pains, cleaned, flattened, mounted, dated and de- 
scribed, and placed in cabinets. "The collection," says Collingwood, 
"is a monument to one man's genius and another's patience." All 
this is characteristic of Ruskin. Whatever he did was done with his 
whole heart and will. 

The success of Ruskin, as an author, was phenomenal. Other 
authors of great merit, and even of genius, had to face the indif- 
ference, if not the contempt of publishers and their "readers," who 
not infrequently reject the finest of manuscripts, or accept them 
grudgingly, and on terms which often mean humiliation and pov- 
erty to the author. Here, however, Ruskin possessed a great advan- 
tage, as the son of a rich merchant who could and, we are told, 
. did transact the business end of his earlier work for him. More- 
over, it was a matter of no great importance to him whether they 
paid or not. Still, there remains the fact, standing to his credit 
from the very beginning, that his works were in instant demand and 

1 Preface to Vol. 5, Modern Painters. 



28 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

soon became popular and profitable. The first volume of Modern 
Painters, published in May, 1843, as the work of an "Oxford Grad- 
uate" created a storm, and notwithstanding that it was severely 
criticised by the influential reviewers, as having dared to set up 
a new standard of art criticism, the books speedily became in great 
demand, the name of the anonymous author leaked out, and young 
Ruskin became the literary lion.^ He "created a department of 
literature all his own, and adorned it with works the like of which 
had never been seen. 

He had enriched the art of England with examples of a new and 
beautiful draughtmanship, and the language with passages of po- 
etic description and declamation, quite, in their way, unrivalled. As 
a philosopher he had built up a theory of art, as yet uncontested; 
and had treated both its abstract nature and its relations to human 
conduct and policy. As a historian he had thrown new light on 
the Middle Ages and Renaissance, illustrating, in a way then novel, 
their chronicles by their remains. He had beaten down opposition, 
risen above detraction, and won the prize of honor, only to realize, 
as he received it, that the fight had been but a pastime tourna- 
ment, after all; and to hear, through the applause, the enemy's 
trumpet sounding to battle."^ 

A recent author who writes on art has this to say of "The influ- 
ence of Ruskin:" 

"His imagination reconstructed the past. He rescued half-lost 
treasures of art from the power of oblivion. He went on art pil- 
grimages to old cities of Italy, and, at Florence, he spent months of 
silent musing in its cool mediaeval churches, regarding no other 
critic's authority, reading the ancient records at first hand, mixing 
learning with intuition, putting himself into the place of the 
builders and living their lives, until the city of Brunelleschi flour- 
ishes again. He studied Venice with the same independence, and 
Verona, Milan, Padua, Bologna, Assisi, so that Giotto and Gentile 
da Fabriano, Carpaccio and later masters, greet him as one who loved 
them ; he came up slowly to Amiens, and, behold, the world was con- 
scious that it had never before known these churches, tombs, sculp- 
tures, and paintings. They were again holy shrines of prayer and 
praise, and glowed in their pristine splendors. He opened their 
beauty to eyes that never saw. ... He went to the moral springs, 

1 In, 1883 Ruskin wrote to the author of "The Life and Times of Sydney Smith" 
and stated that he (Sydney Smith) was the first in the literary circles of Lon- 
don to assert the value of "Modern Painters." 

2 Collingwood. 



THE LIFE OF JOHN RUSKIN 29 

and to those divine principles of righteousness and power which 
belong to religion even as they do to art. He marked distinctions 
in the relative importance of art-ideas between the ideal and the 
real, spiritual and sensuous beauty, nature and imitation, truth and 
artificialness." James H. Hoppin — Great Epochs in Art History. 

Ruskin found the highest expression of art in architecture. With 
him the art of building is the crowning glory of human genius, al- 
though he marks the distinction between the mechanical builder 
and the architect. He defines architecture as "the art which so 
disposes and adorns the edifices raised by man for whatsoever uses, 
that the sight of them contributes to his mental health, power and 
pleasure," while to build, he says, is "to put together and adjust 
the several pieces of any edifice." He also says, "I believe archi- 
tecture must be the beginning of arts, and that the others must fol- 
low her in their time and order."^ 

Man, as he came first from the hands of his Creator — man in the 
state of nature, is the most helpless, the least protected of all the 
animal world. In his very birth there is the suggestion that he 
must himself evolve and produce his own house. There is a 
possible looking backward, as well as a personal experience in 
the saying of Jesus: "The Son of Man hath not where to lay his 
head." This indeed expresses the truth of Man in his normal 
or primitive condition. Nature clothes the lion and the bear — 
gives a coat of wool to the lamb and of feathers to the bird. The 
ant and the bee have each their house ; "foxes have holes and birds 
have nests." They possess the instinct to find or construct these 
things to their own needs. The marvelous and beautiful structure 
of the first spider's web was like that of the present day, and the 
bees which constructed the comb and found a home in the cleft 
of the mountain took their lessons of Great Nature at the begin- 
ning and it was then, as now, perfect, adapted, beautiful, and true 
as the lines of light from the sun. 

But architecture is not a gift of instinct by which the first man 
could make for himself a house of wood or stone ; it is an evolution 
of his intellect and genius. It is the soul of strength — an indenture 
of progress and truth. There has never been built a house, by man 
for man, whether of mud or marble, which departed wholly from 
the cardinal lines of moral truth. 

The house which is built without regard to truth is the house 

^ Seven Lamps: The Lamp of Obedience. 



30 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

on the sand, while the house built in truth is on the rock. And 
this literal truth represents the building of human character — the 
building of the soul, as well as of the house of shelter, or of art, 
or worship. 

He who carves a stone to fill a niche must make it mathemati- 
cally correct, or it will express a lie and will not fit. He who lays 
bricks without regard to the strictest meter of truth is putting his 
own falsehood into the building — and no house can stand that is 
built upon a lie. This is the lesson which mechanism gives to the 
boy who comes from a home where no truth is. The first demon- 
stration of truth to many an one comes with a fact of the work- 
shop — a piece of wood cut 9 Mooo inches will not fit in a nine inch 
space. When a boy goes to the industrial school and learns that 
a wheel or pattern must be square, or circle, and true to a thou- 
sandth part of an inch, he meets a moral proposition as well as a 
mathematical fact. If he be careless, shiftless, or untrue in the 
measure of one solitary hair's-breadth, the laws of nature smite him 
in the face as a liar. 

All this is embodied in the doctrines of work as taught by Rus- 
kin.^ No teacher ever insisted more resolutely than he did that the 
moral quality of a man's work is the exact expression of his soul. 
"Every principle of painting," he said, "which I have stated is 
traced to some vital or spiritual fact; and in my works on archi- 
tecture the preference accorded finally to one school over another, is 
founded on a comparison of their influences on the life of the 
workman — a question by all other writers on the subject of archi- 
tecture wholly forgotten or despised." — Modern Painters, Vol. 5. 

Further even than this, Ruskin claims that "every form of archi- 
tecture is in some sort the embodiment of the polity, life, history, 
and religious faith of nations." 

That these moral principles were ever in his mind through all 
his years of labor is apparent as we read his letters in Fors Clavigera. 
In one of these letters written in 1877 he says : 

"In rough approximation of date nearest to the completion of the 
several pieces of my past work, as they are built one on the other — 
at twenty, I wrote Modern Painters; at thirty, The Stones of Venice; 
at forty. Unto this Last; at fifty the Inaugural Oxford lectures ; and, 
if Fors Clavigera is ever finished as I mean, it will mark the mind 

1 See page — 



THE LIFE OF JOHN RUSKIN 31 

I had at sixty ; and leave me in my seventh day of life, perhaps — 
to rest. For the code of all I had to teach will then be, in form, as 
it is at this hour, in substance, completed. Modern Painters taught 
the claim of all lower nature on the hearts of men ; of the rock, and 
wave, and herb, as a part of their necessary spirit life; in all that 
I now bid you to do, to dress the earth and keep it, I am fulfilling 
what I then began. 

The Stones of Venice taught the laws of constructive art, and the 
dependence of all human work or edifice, for its beauty, on the 
happy life of the workman. Unto this Last taught the laws of that 
life itself, and its dependence on the Sun of Justice: the Inaugural 
Oxford lectures, the necessity that it should be led, and the gracious 
laws of beauty and labor recognized, by the upper, no less than the 
lower, classes of England; and lastly Fors Clavigera has declared 
the relation of these to each other, and the only possible conditions 
of peace and honor, for low and high, rich and poor, together, in 
the holding of that first estate, under the only despot, God, from 
which whoso falls, angel or man, is kept, not mythically nor dis- 
putably, but here in visible horror of chains under darkness to 
the judgment of the great day; and in keeping which service is 
perfect freedom, and inheritance of all that a loving Creator can 
give to his creatures, and an immortal Father to his children." 

A year before this he wrote about the "various designs of which 
he had been merely collecting material." "These included," says 
Mr. Harrison, "a history of fifteenth century Florentine art in six 
octavo volumes; an analysis of the Attic art of the fifth century 
B. C, in three volumes ; an exhaustive history of northern thirteen 
century art, in ten volumes; a life of Sir "Walter Scott, with an 
analysis of modern epic art, in seven volumes; a life of Xenophon, 
with analysis of the general principle of education, in ten volumes ; 
a commentary on Hesiod, with final analysis of the principles of 
Political Economy, in nine volumes; and a general description of 
the geology and botany of the Alps, in twenty-four volumes." If 
it be said that this was a dream only, it must be remembered that 
all the lectures and notes, all the jottings and memorandums, of 
his close observation and frequent travel were collections of mate- 
rial for this stupendous scheme. What might have been the out- 
come, if the years of this great soul's life had not been interrupted 
by periods of physical weakness and sometimes of utter prostration, 
can only be left to the imagination. 

It is no light tribute to a man who has written so much when 
it is said that: 

"There is not one line that is base, or coarse, or frivolous ; not a 



32 THE RELIGION, OF RUSKIN 

sentence that was framed in envy, malice, wantonness or cruelty ; not 
one piece that was written to win money, or popularity or promo- 
tion ; not a line composed for any selfish end or in any trivial mood. 
... It was always the heart's blood of a rare genius and a noble 
soul. . . His words, flung to the winds, have borne fruit a hun- 
dredfold in lands that he never thought of or designed to reach."^ 

If the reader of this volume never sees a full set of the works 
"which proceeded from Kuskin's brain and heart, he may yet see 
here, that he has left to the world a legacy which is unsurpassed 
in value, in all the world of philosophic literature. 

But greater, even than these gifts of genius, was his personal life 
— his splendid moral example, his pure unselfishness, and self-sac- 
rifice, his fine, keen sense of right and justice, his rare spirit of 
absolute truthfulness, his vigorous and practical protest against 
greed, extravagance, waste, and all forms of tyranny, his enthusi- 
asm for humanity, these all, in one living personality and history 
constitute a far grander and more priceless gift to the world than 
all the products of his great intellect. 

* Harrison. 



IV 

RUSKIN— REFORMER AND ECONOMIST. 

"Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work 
-worth doing." — Theodore Roosevelt. 

"Jesus says, 'Leave father, mother, house and lands, and follow me.' Who 

leaves all, receives more. This is as true intellectually as it is morally 

A self-denial no less austere than the saint's is demanded of the scholar. He must 
•worship truth, and forego all things for that, and choose defeat and pain, so that 
his treasure in thought is thereby augmented. 

"God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose. Take which 
you please, — you can never have both. Between these, as a pendulum, man oscil- 
lates. He in whom the love of repose predominates will accept the first creed, the 
first philosophy, the first political party he meets, — most likely his father's. He 
gets rest, commodity and reputation ; but he shuts the door of truth. He in whom 
the love of truth predominates will keep himself aloof from all moorings, and 
afloat. He will abstain from dogmatism, and recognize all the opposite negations 
between which, as walls, his being is swung. He submits to the inconvenience of 
suspense and imperfect opinion, but he is a candidate for truth, as the other is 
not, and respects the highest law of his being." — Emerson: Essay on Intellect. 

It may be said that no fundamental truth was ever expressed with- 
out a paradox. Perhaps indeed, it cannot be, since every such truth 
involves another. In saying : — "Whosoever will save his life shall 
lose it," Jesus made a statement at once startling and perplexing ; yet 
it is the testimony of human experience that no moral gain comes to 
him who gives in order to gain, and no life-loss falls to him who 
gives to save others. 

Ruskin, himself a paradox, was a striking example of this two-edge 
truth. "Like Emerson," as Jenkin Lloyd Jones says, "he was great 
enough to contradict himself as often as he chose."* 

No man of his time was more radical in regard to what seemed to 
him a social or political wrong; yet he was rigidly conservative in 
some of the recognised channels of public policy and action. He de- 
clared himself a "Tory of the Tories," thus assuming all the old con- 

1 "Doubtless one reason for the antagonism shown to Ruskin as an Economist 
was the impossibility of classifying him. He bewildered people. The English 
public understood a Tory, it understood a Radical. Ruskin was both, and neither. 
He called himself a vehement Tory of the old school : yet he criticised the wage- 
system, which lies at the foundation of the present social order, like a Commun- 
ist. He denounced liberty : yet he hated oppression. No wonder that men shook 
their puzzled heads, and bewailed Ruskin's passion for paradox." — Vida D. Scudder. 

33 



34 TEE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

servatism of the statu quo, and yet he hated the old forms of creed 
and doctrine — whether religious or political — which were current in 
his day, and he pressed the whole weight of his word and work 
against them. He was impatient with men on the score of duty, yet 
at the age of forty-six, he tells us, "he had never voted in his life, 
nor ever meant to do so.'" 

His views on political economy were so directly opposite to the cur- 
rent teaching of men like Mill and Fawcett that he fell upon them 
with all the rigor of his forceful criticism and irony ; in this he was 
severe and merciless, yet in his personal contact with men and 
women he was uniformly gentle and considerate.^ 

He was impractical and Utopian in some of his views and very 
doggedly persistent in their advocacy. He despised common vices as 
inconsistent with moral truth and purity, declaiming against those 
who "would put the filth of tobacco even into the fresh breeze of a 
May morning." He was liberal of his talents and money, yet he in- 
sisted upon the sale of his books at high prices, rejecting with scorn 
the suggestion of popularity through cheapness. 

As a political economist he was decidedly and valorously hetero- 
dox. But he has given the Commercial World some "nuts to crack" 
and has set the teeth of Political Economists on edge with his sharp 
attack. And, if we mistake not, the time is rapidly approaching 
when he will be as well, if not better, appreciated for his teachings 
on this subject as for his chosen theme of art. He says: — "Political 
economy (the economy of a State, or of citizens) consists simply in 
the production, preservation, and distribution, at fittest time and 
place, of useful or pleasurable things. The farmer who cuts his hay 
at the right time ; the ship-wright who drives his bolts well home in 
sound wood ; the builder who lays good bricks in well-tempered mor- 
tar; the housewife who takes care of her furniture in the parlor, 
and guards against all waste in her kitchen ; and the singer who 
rightly disciplines, and never overstrains her voice; are all political 
economists in the true and final sense; adding continually to the 
riches and well-being of the nation to which they belong."' 

It is here that Ruskin joins hands and seems to touch heart, with 
his great friend, whom he delighted to regard as his master and 
teacher — Thomas Carlyle. 

1 Time and Tide, Letter xix. 

2 See Chapter on Ruskin the Man. 
8 Unto This Last. 



THE LIFE OF JOHN RUSKIN 35 

It has been well pointed out that "there is to be found in both men 
a body of positive teaching almost identical in proposal of practical 
methods and solutions. 'Past and Present' is the best commentary 
of 'Unto This Last.' "^ 

In the four splendid essays, constituting this work, we have the 
gospel of political economy clearly defined from his standpoint, 
and prophetically proclaimed. Of all our author's great works, the 
economic doctrines advocated and expounded in these essays and in 
*'Munera Pulveris" are the most epoch making, and we are inclined 
to agree with Harrison in the opinion, that they "are the most 
serviceable things that Ruskin gave to the world." 

Nowhere else, that we have been able to discover, among modem 
writers can there be found such clear, consistent teaching on the fun- 
damental principles of political economy. Ruskin sees that truth is 
harmonious, that no doctrine can be right which is inconsistent 
with moral law, no matter how seductively, and apparently wise, it 
may be stated. He sees that the old Hebrew Prophets had a true 
conception of economy as it applies to the moral nature as well as to 
physical desires. "Wherefore do ye spend money for that which 
is not bread; and your labor for that which satisfieth not?" are ques- 
tions fundamental, alike to the physical and the moral life. His 
definitions are as clear as his moral principles are sound. "Witness 
the following note distinguishing between "value" and "price:" — 

"It were to be wished that our well-educated merchants recalled to 
mind always this much of their Latin schooling, — that the nomina- 
tive of valorem is valor. Valor, from valere, to be well, or strong 
(vyiatKw) ; strong in life (if a man), or valiant; strong for life (if 
a thing) , or valuable. To be "valuable," therefore, is to "avail to- 
wards Ufe." A truly valuable or availing thing is that which leads 
to life with its whole strength. In proportion as it does not lead to 
life, or as its strength is broken, it is less valuable; in proportion as 
it leads away from life, it is unvaluable or malignant. 

The value of a thing, therefore, is independent of opinion, and of 
quantity. Think what you will of it, gain how much you may of 
it, the value of the thing itself is neither greater nor less. Forever 
it avails, or avails not ; no estimate can raise, no disdain depress, the 
power which it holds from the Maker of things and of men."^ 

Such a definition as this is final. One can anchor to it and feel 
that there are no shifting sands under it. Value is not determined 

*Johii Ruskin, by Vida B. Scudder, p. 139. 
2 Unto This Last: Essay 4- 



36 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

hy price, for the latter changes with supply and with desire and 
caprice.^ Often the price of an article in the commercial world bears 
no relation to its value. Ruskin traces value to the "Maker of things 
and of men." That is the greatest into which God has im- 
pressed most of himself. That in which there is more of elemen- 
tary power for beauty and utility is of more value. In so much as 
there is more of Nature and of God in a bird than in a diamond or 
a ruby there is more of value in it. Carry this thought upward and 
we see why man is essentially "of more value than many sparrows," 
or of many precious stones.^ 

The aim of political economy according to Ruskin is "the multi- 
plication of human life at the highest standard." "There is no 
wealth but life" he declares and very seriously he asks:— "May not 
the manufacture of souls of a good quality be worthy our attention." 
Ruskin had much to say to men who accumulate large fortunes. 
"No man," he said, "can become largely rich by his own personal 
toil ... it is only by the discovery of some method of taxing the 
labor of others that he can become opulent. Every increase of his 
capital enables him to extend this taxation more widely. 
Large fortunes cannot honestly be made by the work of one man's 
hands or head. If his work benefits multitudes, and involves posi- 
tion of high trust it may be (I do not say that it is) expedient to re- 
ward him with great wealth or estate ; but fortune of this kind is 
freely given in gratitude for benefit, not as payment for labor. "^ 

^ Thus he disputes the right of any man to become a multi-million- 
aire, and his doctrines of interest and money are consistent with this 
attitude. His vigorous protest against usury strikes at the very root 
of the matter, for it includes the condemnation of all "interest" on 
money. In this he was not so radical, as in some of his views, for 
he justified the ownership of interest bearing stock. He said, "I 
hold bank stock simply because I suppose it to be safer than any 
other stock, and I take the interest of it, because though taking inter- 
est is, in the abstract, as wrong as war, the entire fabric of society is 

iWhen it is said that "the very jewel in your ring would protect from hunger 
a mass of people" (Ambrose), there is danger of wrongly viewing the value of the 
jewel. The price for which a jewel may be sold would purchase food and stay 
the temporary hunger of a number of people, and the sale of it, for such a pur- 
pose, would be a benevolent deed: but the jewel belongs to another realm than 
food. All the jewels in the world would not feed one hungry child. — Edit. 
2 Time and Tide. 



THE LIFE OF JOHN RUSKIN 37 

at present so connected with both usury and war, that it is not possi- 
ble violently to withdraw from either evil.'" 

Consistent with this view of interest Ruskin had radical ideas of 
money. Money is not wealth, but a documentary claim to wealth. 

This view of interest, which Ruskin emphasised and illustrated in 
his later writings" has occasioned much controversy and many of 
Ruskin's admirers class it among his Utopian ideas. "I lent one of 
my servants" he says, "eleven hundred pounds, to build a house with 
and stock its grounds. After some years he paid me back the eleven 
hundred pounds. If I had taken eleven hundred pounds, and 
a penny, the extra penny would have been usury." 

But another closely related doctrine in his mind was that of 
money itself. He defined money as "a documentary expression of 
legal claim, and vigorously endorsed Aristotle's remark that "Money 
is barren." 

"It is not wealth, but a documentary claim to wealth, being the 
sign of the relative quantities of it, or of the labour producing it, to 
which, at a given time, persons or societies, are entitled. If all the 
money in the world, notes and gold, were destroyed in an instant, it 
would leave the world neither richer nor poorer than it was. But 
it would leave the individual inhabitants of it in different relations. 
Money is therefore correspondent, in its nature, to the title deed of an 
estate. Though the deed be burned, the estate still exists, but the 
right of it has become disputable."^ 

The present money system of the world, though borrowed from the 
ancient nations, seems to be as far removed from radical change as if 
it were the most scientific and up-to-date agency. And yet, as the 
moral conscience becomes quickened, and the intellectual perception 
of the common people develop, through the teachings of such men as 
Ruskin, who shall say how soon a revolution of the commercial as- 
pect of money may come? 

It is a common observation that money is the most absolute 
power in the world. Ruskin has taught us that this power is illegi- 
timate. Not that money could, or should, ever be divested of all 

1 Fors Clavigera. Letter 21. 

2 See "Fors," Letters 68 and 78. Also "Arrows of the Chace," and especially 
The Letters on Usury in "The Old Road." 

3 "Munera Pulveris," Chap. 1. 



I' 



****'°"^ ^ * ^ ^ ly * 



38 TEE RELIGION OF RUSK IN 

power, but in vesting it with "legal interest" it becomes an imperious 
and oppressive tax on all forms of wealth/ 

On the subject of taxes, by the way, he said "In true justice, the 
only honest, and wholly right, tax is one not merely on income, but 
property, increasing in percentage as the property is greater. And 
the main virtue of such a tax is that it makes publicly known what 
every man has, and how he gets it."^ 

It is chiefly on account of his economic teachings that Ruskin has 
BO often been classed as a Socialist. Mr. Hobson claims that in the 
sense that socialism is a unity of persons for "a common end or pur- 
pose which determines and imposes the activities" of these persons, 
he was a Socialist, and further that, true to Socialism, he favored the 
substitution of public for private enterprise and publicluppqrt and 
control of individual life by the State.^ 

But Ruskin was too really a conservator of authority and order to 
be a recognised Socialist. In spite of his vigorous protests against 
the usurpation of kings and priests, through the agency of money 
and war, he held strongly to the duty and value of reverence and 
obedience, and just as strongly denounced the liberty and democracy 
of socialism. 

As a Reformer Ruskin employed all his great talents in unselfish 
service. He literally consecrated all he had and all he was to the 
advancement of human good as he understood it. His aim in his 
lectures to workmen and others was to impart knowledge and stimu- 
late to right thinking all who heard his words of wisdom and learn- 
ing. In the same self-sacrificing spirit he gave freely of his wealth. 

1 A very friendly and able review of Ruskin as a Social Reformer, Mr. J. 
A. Hobson, thinks that Ruskin "has fallen a victim to a famous fallacy which has, 
in the history of economic thought, proved fatal to many of the subtlest intellects 
the world has ever known. The intellectu?! repudiation of interest has nearly 
always arisen from the difficulty of conceiving that money could produce anything, 
either money or more wealth of any kind." But has any one -ver shown the world 
that money, or any other kind of tool, does "produce" anything? It is the man 
behind the tool who produces. So long as the tool abstains it produces nothing. 
There is no wrong done to the man who uses the tool when he is asked to share 
his products with the man who owns the tool, but the tools are placed in the hands 
of men who exact a tax for their use without sharing the risks. There is all the 
difference between the right of an individual to become a partner with another in 
the use of his money, thereby sharing its profits and losses ; and the present sys- 
tem which invests money with arbitrary power over every species of wealth and pro- 
ductive service. "Legal interest" knows nothing of the risks and losses of work— 
whether in the farm or the shop. It knows only gains, and it imposes its tax, 
with a force more imperious and irresistible than a government tax. — Edit. 

2 Fors. 1 : Letter 7. 

'John Ruskin, Social Reformer. Hobson, p. 193. 



THE LIFE OF JOHN RUSK IN 39 

At his father's death he inherited a fortune equal to about a million 
of dollars. This, together with large sums of money earned by his 
work as author and lecturer, he regarded as so much of talent with 
which to do good to mankind. In his giving he did not measure 
by what other people did, nor did he stop at a tithe, he reserved bare- 
ly the tenth for himself and gave the rest. One of his favorite chan- 
nels of beneficence may well be commended to American million- 
aires who are seeking for a disposition of some of their surplus 
wealth. He made himself personally acquainted with young men 
and women who were struggling against odds, to educate themselves, 
or otherwise to gain a position in the world. These he helped, not 
only with advice, but with money and influence. Poor, struggling 
artists frequently found in him a ready and generous friend. In a 
single year his benefactions reached the sum of $7'6,000. 

Another suggestion to the rich comes from his inaugurating the 
building of apartment houses and cottages for working men, where 
they could live like Christians without being crushed under exorbi- 
tant rents. This latter work was greatly aided by the famous 
George Peabody, who built a number of such homes in London.* 

Ruskin was never able, in his thoughts of the United States, as a, 
nation, to do it justice. His view of liberty, which seems to have in- 
cluded the absence of restraint, prevented him from seeing that the 

1 President Roosevelt's call for American family life needs to be supplemented 
by a practical scheme of philanthropic enterprise to make home-keeping possible. 
The city flat, as a home, is far from ideal : costing from one-quarter to one-half 
the average earnings of the people, it is, nevertheless, little more than a lodging 
in a hotel, and is subject to frequent changes, with "notices to quit," just when 
increase of family renders it hard and expensive to remove. 

The philanthropic capitalist vpho builds libraries and endows colleges is encour- 
aging and helping us to intelligent citizenship, but he who will invest in the build- 
ing of cottages for the struggling home-founders will do vastly more towards the 
building of a safe and intelligent Republic. 

If we may take the estimate- of the American Federation of Women's Clubs as 
a basis, a seven-room cottage, with bath-room, closets, etc., may be built at a cost, 
in different localities, of from $1,500 to $2,000. (Report of Convention at St. 
Paul, Minn., June 4, 1906.) The same authorities estimate the cost of lots in 
suburban places at $250.00. If $250.00 be added to these estimates we have 
$3,000.00 as the cost of lots and cottages. On this estimate one million dollars 
would build 333 such cottages. These could be readily sold on a basis of cash, or 
part-cash payments, or by an easy system of payment-by-rent. Such cottages, 
wherever available, now readily rent for from $20 to $30 per month. If the 
occupier paid the lesser of these two amounts ($20) he could become the owner 
in fifteen years, having paid $600.00 more than the actual cost ($3,000). sufficient 
for management expenses, taxes, and repairs. Meantime the rent, or purchase 
money, would be building other such houses, the original capital perpetuating 
itself, — a self-projecting fund, safer and more productive than the best form of 
endowment, which employs interest only. — Edit. 



40 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

American conception of liberty meant government. And while a 
great free Republic was certain to be wrongly interpreted by many 
as free and irresponsible license, yet this was not, and is not the 
spirit of a true democracy. He said : 

"If I had to choose, I would tenfold rather see the tyranny 
of old Austria triumphant in the old and new worlds, and trust to 
the chance (or rather the certainty) of some day seeing a true Em- 
peror born to its throne, than, with every privilege of thought and 
act, run the most distant risk of seeing the thoughts of the people of 
Germany and England become like the thoughts of the people of 
America." 

But that splendid American citizen and public teacher, Charles 
Eliot Norton, whom Ruskin delighted to call the "dearest friend I 
have in the world" told him that he "knew nothing about America," 
to which Ruskin answered: — "It may be so, and I therefore usually 
say nothing about it. But this much I have said, because the Ameri- 
cans, as a Nation, set their trust in liberty and ecjuality, of wiiicH I 
detest the one, and deny the possibilify of the other; and because, 
also7^ a Nation, they are wliolly undesirous of Rest, and incap- 
able of it ; irreverent of themselves, both in the present and in the fu- 
ture; discontented with what they are, yet having no ideal of any- 
thing which they desire to become.* 

It was of course the right and privilege of the old world to look 
with critical eye upon the struggle of the American Nation towards 
its ideal. For it had an ideal, and one which men of the old world 
could not understand, viz. : the divine right of the People, expressed 
in a completely democratic form of government. The world had no 
experience, or history, to guide it in its judgment of this principle, 
as the basis for the government of a great nation, and it was to be ex- 
pected that mistakes would be made in applying it. It was also to bo 
expected that old-world-thinkers would emphasise the dangers in- 
volved. 

Ruskin wrote some things about America which he did not pre- 
serve and which would have proved that his friend Norton was 
right, but he retained a note upon the American war which is of in- 
terest, not only because it applies to war in general, but also be- 
cause it emphasises a principle which has been observed in more 
recent wars of America to a degree that is perhaps unexampled in 

1 Time and Tide : Letter 22. 



THE LIFE OF JOHN RUSKIN 41 

the world's history, and which, let us hope, will be yet better ob- 
served in the future.i 

Had Ruskin lived a few years longer he might have seen answers 
to his criticisms of America which are better than argument. Here, 
above everywhere, his own best doctrines of political economy and re- 
form are in a fair way to be tested and approved. And while it is 
true that we have not yet, in the United States, reached the desired 
haven of the spirit of Rest, yet our government is established in the 
eyes of the world. And while kingdoms are tottering and thrones 
are insecure, the American Nation enjoys a measure of confidence 
and esteem which has never been surpassed in the history of Na- 
tions; and our President ranks, in respect and honor, with the 
highest and greatest of the throned monarchs of the world. 

* All methods of right government are to be communicated to foreign nations by 
perfectness of example and gentleness of patiently expanded power, not suddenly, 
nor at the bayonet's point. And though it is the duty of every nation to inter- 
fere, at bayonet's point, if it has the power to do so, to save any op- 
pressed multitude, or even individual, from manifest violence, it is wholly unlawful 
to interfere in such a matter, except with sacredly pledged limitation of the objects 
to be accomplished in the oppressed person's favor, and with absolute refusal of 
all selfish advantage and increase of territory or of political power which might 
otherwise accrue from victory." — Time and Tide, Letter 22. 



V 

EUSKIN— LECTURER AND TEACHER. 

"It is no proof of a man's understanding to be able to affirm whatever he 
pleases, but to be able ito discern that what is true, is true, and that what is false 
is false ; this is the mark and character of intelligence." — Emmanuel Swedenborg. 

"I find this conclusion more impressed upon me, — that the greatest thing a 
human soul ever does in this world is to see something, and tell what it saw in 
a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, but thousands 
can think for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy, and religion,— 
all in one." — Modern Painters, Vol. 3. 

Ruskin, as a teacher, was the same untiring, self-sacrificing soul 
as in all other of the many forms of service which he rendered to 
humanity. His was the giving of genius, which knows no limit, 
which pours itself out without stint or self-thought and which works 
with multiplied powers when the object in view is a beneficent one. 

He lectured and taught for the love of the work, but yet more for 
the opportunity which the work afforded him to impart knowledge 
to others. He found no greater pleasure than in the study of moun- 
tain, river, tree, flower, or any other of Nature's many forms of 
expression, in order that he might give it out to the truth-seeker. 
Very earnestly he taught that the ennobling and truly profitable 
thing in all work lies, not alone in its productiveness, but also in 
its co-operation with providence, for if it fails to give itself it loses 
power. His counsel to artists on this subject appeals with equal 
force to all other workmen: 

"Wherever art is practiced for its own sake, and the delight of the 
workman is in what he does and produces, instead of what he inter- 
prets or exhibits, — there art has an influence of the most fatal kind 
on brain and heart, and it issues, if long so pursued, in the destruc- 
tion both of intellectual power and moral principle; whereas art, 
devoted humbly and self-forgetfully to the clear statement and 
record of the facts of the universe, is always helpful and beneficent 
to mankind, full of comfort, strength, and salvation. . 

Reverence, then, and compassion, we are to teach primarily, and 
with these, as the bond and guardian of them, truth of spirit and 
word, of thought and sight. Truth, earnest and passionate, sought 
for like a treasure and kept like a crown." 

42 



THE LIFE OF JOHN RUSKIN 43 

If Ruskin were living in this age he would have the satisfaction 
of seeing one of his pet ideas of education in full force in many 
of our schools. Manual training is almost past the experimental 
stage. To what extent Ruskin's advocacy influenced this result 
it is, of course, impossible to estimate, but it is interesting to note 
what he said on the subject: 

"It would be part of my scheme of physical education that every 
youth in the state — from the king's son downwards — should learn 
to do something finely and thoroughly with his hand, so as to let 
him know what touch meant; and what stout craftmanship meant; 
and to inform him of many things besides, which no man can learn 
but by some severely accurate discipline in doing. Let him once 
learn to take a straight shaving off a plank, or draw a fine curve with- 
out faltering, or lay a brick level in its mortar; and he has learned 
a multitude of other matters which no lips of man could ever 
teach him. He might choose his craft, but whatever it was, he 
should learn it to some sufficient degree of true dexterity; and the 
result would be, in after life, that among the middle classes a good 
deal of their house furniture would be made, and a good deal of 
rough work, more or less clumsily, but not ineffectively, got through, 
by the master himself and his sons, with much furtherance of their 
general health and peace of mind, and increase of innocent do- 
mestic pride and pleasure, and to the extinction of a great deal of 
vulgar upholstery and other mean handicraft."^ 

"Education," he says again, "does not mean teaching people 
to know what they do not know ; it means teaching them to behave 
as they do not behave. It is not teaching the youth the shapes of 
letters and the tricks of numbers, and then leaving them to turn 
their arithmetic to roguery and their literature to lust.^ 

The manner and methods of Ruskin when teaching were de- 
lightful. "We have Collingwood's authority for the statement that 
Ruskin was the first to provide casts from natural leaves and fruit 
and even trees, in the classroom, "in place of the ordinary conven- 
tional ornament." For sketching from nature he took his classes 
"out into the country and would wind up with tea and talk." Art 

iTime and Tide: Letter 16. Ibid. 21. 

2 Mr. Hobson makes the following pertinent comment on this: "There is only 
•too great reason to believe that the plague of gambling, which is sapping the 
moral life, and the twin evil of the monstrous comsumption of the lowest orders 
of sensational journalism, are the natural and necessary results of a national edu- 
cation which ends in teaching to read and to calculate the odds, without even 
tempering these processes with humanizing elements." — John Ruskin, Social Re' 
former, page 270. 



44 TEE RELIGION OF RUSK IN 

students of the present day will see nothing novel in Ruskin's use 
of paper and charcoal drawings in his lecture illustrations, but 
those of our large cities may sigh in vain for the romantic visit to 
the country, where they can receive instruction from teacher and 
nature, and at the same time enjoy the recreation and inspiration 
of the country scenery. 

Education was one of the "'three heads of purpose" of St. George's 
Guild and as Ruskin's influence in this institution was supreme, 
he could carry out his plans in his own way. "In their libraries," 
he said, "there shall be none but noble books and in their sight none 
but noble art." These he furnished, books of his own selection and 
cost, and pictures from his own private collection. 

As to the possession of wealth, Ruskin reminds one of Tolstoi, al- 
though he taught his doctrines long before the Russian reformer 
was known to the world. He calls himself a "Communist of the 
old school." And he explains what he means by this term. 

"First, it means that everybody must work in common, and do 
common or simple work for his dinner. . . . The second respects 
property, and it is that the public, or common, wealth shall be more 
and statelier in all its substance than private wealth — the fountains 
which furnish the people's common drink should be very lovely and 
stately, and adorned with precious marbles, and the like. Then 
farther. . . the private dwellings of uncommon persons — dukes 
and lords — are to be very simple, and roughly put together, such 
persons being supposed to be above all care for things that please 
the commonality ; but all the buildings for public or common serv- 
ice, more especially schools, almshouses and workhouses, are to 
be externally of a majestic character, as being for noble purposes 
and charities, and their interiors furnished with many luxuries for 
the poor and sick. And finally and chiefly, it is an absolute law of 
old Communism that the fortunes of private persons should be 
small, and of little account in the state ; but the common treasury of 
the whole nation should be of superb and precious things in redun- 
dant quantity, as pictures, statues, precious books, gold and silver 
vessels, preserved from ancient times, gold and silver bullion laid 
up for use, in case of any chance need of buying anything suddenly 
from foreign nations. . . . And in a word that instead of a com- 
mon poverty, or national debt, which every poor person in the nation 
is taxed annually to fulfill his part of, there should be a common 
wealth, or national reverse of debt consisting of pleasant things which 
every poor person in the nation should be summoned to receive his 
dole of."^ 

^Fors, Vol. I, Letter VII. 



THE LIFE OF JOHN RUSK IN 45 

Of course, rich man as Ruskin was and advocating such views, 
he was flooded with correspondence on the subject. "How could 
he retain his wealth and yet proclaim such doctrines?" 

This correspondence came from all sorts of people. In defence 
of private wealth one writer claimed that the rich man came to his 
wealth through a mutually beneficent partnership between the rich 
and the poor by which the poor shared in the joint result. Another 
asked the question: "Where does the rich man get his living?" 
In answering, Ruskin made himself an example to illustrate the 
position, and this is what he said: 

"Where does the rich man get his means of living?" I don't myself 
see how a more straightforward question could be put! so straight- 
forward, indeed, that I particularly dislike making a martyr of 
myself in answering it, as I must this blessed day — a martyr, at 
least, in the way of witness; for if we rich people don't begin to 
speak honestly with our tongues, we shall, some day soon, lose them 
and our heads together, having for some time back, most of us, made 
false use of the one and none of the other. Well, for the point in 
question, then, as to means of living; the most exemplary manner 
of answer is simply to state how I got my own, or rather how my 
father got them for me. He and his partners entered into what 
your correspondent mellifluously styles "a mutually beneficent 
partnership" with certain laborers in Spain. These laborers pro- 
duced from the earth annually a certain number of bottles of wine. 
These productions were sold by my father and his partners, who 
kept nine-tenths, or thereabouts, of the price themselves, and gave 
one-tenth, or thereabouts, to the laborers. In which state of mutual 
beneficence my father and his partners naturally became rich, and 
the laborers as naturally remained poor. Then my good father gave 
all his money to me." 

One cannot imagine a rich man, raised in the midst of luxury, 
and accustomed to all the advantages which an abundance of wealth 
brings, reaching the point of such deliberate denunciations of his 
own possessions, unless he had first, honestly and severely, put him- 
self in the place of the poor, and to do this he must have passed 
through long and keen suffering for others. 

But this is in perfect accord with all testimony of his noble life. 
Mr. Collingwood quotes an anonymous writer in the New Review, 
(March, 1892), who thus speaks of him: "Ruskin, the good Samari- 
tan, ever gentle and open-handed, when true need and a good cause 
made appeal to his heart; Ruskin, the employer, considerate, gen- 
erous — an ideal master." 



46 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

One does not now need a prophet's vision to see how Ruskin's 
views of public ownership of public utilities is gradually being ac- 
cepted as a practical fact. He was away ahead, even of present day 
thought, on the subject when he says: 

"Neither the roads nor the railroads of any nation should belong 
to any private persons. All means of public transit should be pro- 
vided at public expense, by public determination, where such means 
are needed, and the public should be its own shareholder. Neither 
road, nor railroad, nor canal should ever pay dividends to anybody. 
They should pay their working expenses, and no more. All divi- 
dends are simply a tax on the traveler and the goods, levied by the 
persons to whom the road or canal belongs, for the right of passing 
over his property, and this right should at once be purchased by 
the nation, and the original cost of the roadway — ^be it of gravel, 
iron, or adamant — at once defrayed by the nation, and then the 
whole work of the carriage of persons or goods done for ascertained 
prices, by salaried officers, as the carriage of letters is done now." 

He was in advance of Henry George as an advocate of public 
rights in land. In 1882 he wrote to Miss Mary Gladstone, daughter 
of Wm. E. Gladstone, as follows: 

"For these seven, nay these ten years, I have tried to get either 
Mr. Gladstone, or any other conscientious Minister of the Crown, to 
feel that the law of land-possession was for all the world, and eternal 
as the mountains and the sea. Those who possess the land must 
live on it, not by taxing it. Stars and seas and rocks must pass 
away before that Word of God shall pass away — 'The land is 
Mine: " 

No one will be surprised to find fractures in the practical side 
of some of the proposed reforms of Ruskin. He saw every form of 
social error and wrong with the vision of a seer, and he had much 
of the prophetic quality necessary to statesmanship, but he lacked 
the experience. 

Very positively he wrote on the evils of early and ini- 
provident marriages. When he says that_ "ugly and fatal as is 
every form and agency of license, no licentiousness is so mortal as 
licentiousness in marriage" he strikes at the root of a great evil; 
but when he advocates that the remedy lies in denying marriage 
to all who have not first proved their moral fitness, he overlooks the 
fatal licentiousness that would be certain to attend such a plan in 
any free country. Yet in this, as in every change he ever proposed, 
there is much valuable food for thought, as well as practical sug- 
gestion for our own statesmen : 



THE LIFE OF JOHN RUSK IN 47 

"Permission to marry should be the reward held in sight of its 
youth during the entire latter part of the course of their educa- 
tion; and it should be granted as the national attestation that the 
first portion of their lives had been rightfully fulfilled. It should 
not be attainable without earnest and consistent effort, though put 
within the reach of all who were willing to make such effort; and 
the granting of it should be a public testimony to the fact, that the 
youth or maid to whom it was given had lived within their proper 
sphere, a modest and virtuous life, and had attained such skill in 
their proper handicraft, and in arts of household economy, as might 
give well-founded expectations of their being able honorably to 
maintain and teach their children."* 

This would be paternal government indeed ; while it would swing 
the pendulum of state action to one extreme, society is prone to 
swing it to the other. The government which leaves the legal status 
of marriage uncertain, confused, and without uniformity of proc- 
ess — a marriage being legal in one state which is illegal in another — 
providing no safeguards against fraud — opening wide the door to 
any sudden freak of romance or passion — will be certain of much 
domestic strife and unrest, destroying family life and social peace, 
and making provision for a crowded docket in the divorce court. 

It is difficult to name the place that Ruskin held in the political 
faiths of the world. As we have seen he, at one time, called himself 
"a Tory of the old school" at another time, he said, he was "a Com- 
munist of the old school;" and then, at still another time, he ac- 
knowledged himself a Socialist. He was something of them all, 
and yet he was not any one of them. He believed in government, 
property and church, but he did not believe in their assumed func- 
tions, as he saw them in operation. His view of government was 
that its chief business consisted in providing education, housing of 
the working people, helping the unemployed, caring for the poor, 
providing for the aged, recovering of waste land, etc. Capital he 
held to be the means of productive labor and, as such, should be in 
the hands of government; money should be free: that is without 
"legal interest," and private property should be restricted to the use 
of its possessors; the massing of great fortunes would, in these circum- 
stances, be valueless. In short, his advocacy of old-world govern- 
ment was based upon its defence of national interests and its pater- 
nal provision for all the people. On the other hand, as we have 
seen, he denied equality and spurned the democratic idea of liberty. 

1 Time and Tide. 



48 TEE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

ST. GEORGE'S GUILD. 

Ruskin was a theorist, but he could never bear to stop at theory. 
Possessed of money, will, and his rare talent for work, he was al- 
ways ready to put his theories into practice and never happy until 
he, at least, tried to do so. He had dreams of a social Utopia, and 
he spent his talents and his fortune in attempting its realization. 
He gave $25,000 to endow a professorship of drawing ; he started a 
relation in business with $75,000. Seven years after his father's 
death he had given away half his fortune and in a short time he 
had, in like manner, disposed of it all. Thirty-five thousand dol- 
lars of it went into his giant project of St. George's Guild. For 
several years he diligently used the pages of his monthly letter— 
Fors Clavigera — to advocate and set forth the aims and plans of the 
new society. Three essential material things were to be aimed at: 
pure air, water and earth; and three essential immaterial things 
to accompany them : admiration, hope, love. This scheme was rich 
in ideas. It was based on the three main propositions of Ruskin's 
philosophy, viz: (A) That there could be no civilization without 
practical religion; (B) No prosperity apart from labor on the soil; 
and (C) No happiness without honesty and truth. 

Probably no experiment of Communism has ever been floated 
with so much of careful thought and self-sacrificing labor as the 
St. George's Guild, The objects of the society according to Ruskin 
himself were: "to buy land in England; and thereon to train into 
the healthiest and most refined life possible, as many Englishmen, 
Englishwomen and English children, as the land we possess can 
maintain in comfort; to establish, for them and their descendants, 
a national store of continually augmenting wealth ; and to organize 
the goverment of the persons, and administration of the properties, 
under laws which shall be just to all, and secure in their inviolable 
foundation on the Law of God." 

Initiation into the fellowship of the society was simple, and yet 
as binding and solemn, as the oath of a secret society. It was re- 
quired of the members that the following "creed and resolution" 
must be written with their own hand, and signed with the solem- 
nity of a vow : 



THE LIFE OF JOHN RUSKIN 49 

I. I trust in the Living God, Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, 
and of all things and creatures visible and invisible. 
I trust in the kindness of His law, and the goodness of His work. 
And I will strive to love Him, and keep His law and see His work, while 
I live. 

II. I trust in the nobleness of human nature, in the majesty of its faculties, 
the fulness of its mercy, and the joy of its love. 

And I will strive to love my neighbor as myself, and, even when I cannot, 
will act as if I did. 

III. I will labour, with such strength and opportunity as God gives me, for 
my own daily bread ; and all that my hand finds to do, I will do with my 
might. 

IV. I will not deceive, or cause to be deceived, any human being for my gain 
or pleasure ; nor hurt, or cause to be hurt, any human being for my gain 
or pleasure; nor rob, or cause to be robbed, any human being for my gain 
or pleasure. 

V. I will not kill nor hurt any living creature needlessly, nor destroy any 
beautiful thing, but will strive to save and comfort all gentle life, and 
guard and perfect all natural beauty, upon the earth. 
VI. I will strive to raise my own boc'y and soul daily into higher powers cf 
duty and happiness; not in rivalship or contention with others, but for 
the help, delight, and honour of others, and for the joy and peace of my 
own life. 

VII. I will obey all the laws of my country faithfully; and the orders of its 
monarch, and of all persons appointed to be in authority under its mon- 
arch, so far as such laws or commands are consistent with what I suppose 
to be the law of God ; and when they are not, or seem in anywise to need 
change, I will oppose them loyally and deliberately, not with malicious, 
concealed, or disorderly violence. 
VIII. And with the same faithfulness, and under the limits of the same obedi- 
ence, which I render to the laws of my country, and the commands of its 
rulers, I will obey the laws of the Society called of St. George, into which 
I am this day received ; and the orders of its masters, and of all persons 
appointed to be in authority under its masters, so long as I remain a 
Companion, called of St. George. 

The financial operations were to "consist in the accumulation of 
national wealth and store, and therefore in distribution to the poor, 
instead of taxation of them; and the fathers will provide for, and 
nobly endow, not steal from their children and children's children." 

"The most simply measurable part of the store of food and cloth- 
ing will be the basis of the currency, which will be thus constituted. 

The standard of value will be a given weight or measure of grain, 
wine, wool, silk, flax, wood and marble — all answered for by the 
government as of fine and pure quality, variable only within nar- 
row limits." 

"With great patience and zeal Ruskin labored, as one inspired 
of a mighty mission, to present to the world an object lesson of a 
true and beneficent brotherhood. Sometimes his hopes were chilled 
by the indifference and opposition of personal friends on whose 



50 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

co-operation he had counted. At other times he received unlocked 
for support from strangers. All the ups and downs of the move- 
ment, and all its financial transactions were reported with singular 
candor, and Ruskin's delightfully poetic diction made the reading 
of them charming as a romance, as they ran through the letters 
of Fors. 

The movement took some material form in the purchase of a 
farm, which, however, proved a failure, as the Communists knew 
nothing of farming. A cottage was secured at Walkley, Yorkshire, 
where a museum was started. Then at Sheffield, a more enduring 
museum was founded, the object of which was to collect and pre- 
serve specimens of human work of the very best. To these Ruskin 
added numerous works of art, out of his own collection, or purchased 
from his purse. Many other projects were started, but this museum 
is all that is left to human sight as the direct result of these years 
of self-sacrificing philanthropic endeavor.* 

The weakness of it all was, that from the beginning to the end, 
the scheme lacked systematic form. It was full of brilliant ideas 
such as could only have come from one who was both a philosopher 
and a dreamer. But, as Mr. Harrison remarks : "It will long live 83 
the pathetic dream of a beautiful but lonely spirit to flee from the 
wrath that is, and to find salvation in a purer world." 

Happily the immortality of great souls does not rest upon the 
success or failure of material agencies, or social schemes. 

As a lecturer Ruskin was learned and profound, but he was no 
"Dry-as-diLst!" Every class of people delighted to hear him. 
Whether he spoke to university scholars, to workingmen, to young 
girls, or little children — all were equally charmed by him. 

His lecture room at Oxford in 1870, when, as "Slade Professor" 
he taught at the university, was always crowded with members, old 
and young, and their friends, "who flocked to hear and see him." 
Mr. Collingwood gives a description of his manner of delivery at 
this time. "He used to begin by reading, in his curious intonation, 
the carefully written passages of rhetoric, which usually occupied 
only about half of his hour. By and by he would break off, and 

1 We do not mean to say that .there are now no societies bearing the magic 
name of Ruskin and seeking, in one way or another, to carry his ideas into effect. 
Such institutions have been organized in many parts of the United States and 
Great Britain. See Appendix in Mr. Hobson's book: "John Ruskin, Social 
Reformer" 



THE LIFE OF JOHN RUSKIN 51 

with quite another air extemporise the liveliest interpolations, de- 
scribing his diagrams and specimens, restating his arguments, re- 
enforcing his appeal. His voice became dramatic. He used to act 
his subject, apparently without premeditated art, in the liveliest 
pantonlime. . . . He gave himself over to his subject with such 
unreserved intensity of imaginative power, he felt so vividly and 
spoke so from the heart, that he became whatever he talked about, 
never heeding his professional dignity, and never doubting the sym- 
pathy of his audience. Lecturing on birds, he strutted like the 
chough, made himself wings like the swallow; he was for the mo- 
ment like a cat, in explaining that engraving was the art of scratch- 
ing. ... It was so evidently the expression of his intense eager- 
ness for his subject, so palpably true to his purpose, and he so carried 
his hearers with him, that one saw in the grotesque of the perform- 
ance only the guarantee of sincerity. If one wanted more proof of 
that, there was his face, still young-looking and beardless, made for 
expression, and sensitive to every change of emotion. A long head, 
with enormous capacity of brain, veiled by thick wavy hair, not 
affectedly lengthy, but as abundant as ever; and darkened into a 
deep brown, without a trace of grey, and short, light whiskers grow- 
ing high over his cheeks."* 

His work at the lecture room was incredibly great. Mere sta- 
tistics of his lectures would give but a faint idea of the amount of 
study and preparation involved. But the following list of subjects 
treated, together with the year of their first delivery, will serve in 
some measure to show the sweep of his mental occupation in this 
branch of work. The published works in which the lectures may be 
found, in whole or in part, are also given. The list is not offered as 
complete, there are probably others not recorded. 

1853. Architecture. "Stones of Venice" and "Seven Lamps." 

1854. Decorative Art. (3 Lectures). 

1857. Imagination in Architecture. "The Two Paths." 

1857. Address at School of Art. 

1857. The Political Economy of Art. (2) "A Joy Forever." 

1857. Art Considered as Wealth. 

1858. Relation of Art to Manufacture. 

1858. Deteriorative Power of Conventional Art. "The Two 
Paths." 

1 "Life of John Ruskin," p. 272. 



52 TEE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

1858. "Work of Iron in Nature, Art and Policy. "The Two- 
Paths." 

1858. Inaugural Address at School of Art for Workmen. 

1859. The Unity of Art. "The Two Paths." 

1859. Modern Manufacture and Design. "The Two Paths." 

1861. Tree Leaves, Etc. "Modern Painters," "Proserpina." 

1862. Political Economy. "Unto this Last." 
1864. Kings' Treasuries. "Sesame and Lilies." 

1864. Queens' Gardens. "Sesame and Lilies." 

1865. Work and Play.— To Working Men. "Crown of Wild 
Olive." 

1865. Traffic— To Merchants. "Crown of Wild Olive." 

1865. War.— At Royal Academy. "Crown of Wild Olive." 

1865. Study of Architecture in Schools. 

1867. National Ethics and National Art. 

1868. Mystery of Life and its Arts. "Sesame and Lilies."" 

1869. The Future of England. "Crown of Wild Olive." 
1869. Architecture. "Queen of the Air." 

1869. Greek Myths of Storm. "Queen of the Air." 

1870. Greek Relief Studies— Elements of Sculpture (6). "Ara- 
tra Pentelici." 

1870. Education and Aims of Life. 

1871. Landscape, (3). "Modern Painters," Vol. 3. 

1872. Mythology— The Bird of Calm. 

1872. Natural Science and Art. (University Lectures, 10). 
"Eagles Nest." 

1872. Engraving. (A Course) "Ariadne Florentina." 

1873. Nature and Authority of Miracle. 

1873. Greek and English Birds. (3 Lectures) "Love's Meinie." 

1873. Early Tuscan Art. (10 Lectures) "Val D'Arno." 
1873-74. Five Courses of Lectures Reviewing and Reconstruct- 
ing all his Study and Treatment of Art. "Modern Painters." 

1874. Alpine Forms. (Course of Four). 

1874. Course of Eight on Schools of Florence. 

1875. Glacial Actions in the Alps. 
1875. Natural Selection. 

1875. "Reynolds." (12 Lectures.) 

1876. Precious Stones. "Deucalion." 
1876. Iris of the Earth. "Deucalion." 



THE LIFE OF JOHN RUSKIN 53 

1877. The Yewdale and it Streamlets. "Deucalion." Part 3. 

1877. Readings in Modern Painters. (12 Lectures.) 

1880. Amiens. (12 Lectures.) "Bible in Amiens." 

1883. Recent English Art. Course at Oxford on Re-election as 

Slade Professor. "The Art of England." 

1883. Lecture at London. (Subject not given.) 

1883. The Pleasures of Learning, Faith, Deed (3.) "Pleasures 

of England." 

1883. Lecture at Coniston. (Subject not given.) 

1884. During this year Ruskin gave fourteen lectures, covering 
the same ground as many of the previous ones, and on Dec. 1st he 
closed his work as a lecturer. 

"We look in vain through all the long period of this work for any 
evidence of departure from the foundation principles which he had 
so early inculcated by his study of the Bible under his mother's care 
and direction. Certain interpretations, forms, creeds and doctrines 
he rejected; and flung them away with that passionate scorn with 
which he regarded everything that savored of untruth or sham. But 
the Eternal Verities were as unquestioned as the Stars of the 
Heavens, and these inspired him and remained his imperishable, 
immortal possessions. 



VI 

THE RELIGIOUS MIND OF RUSKIN. 

"He fonght his doubts and gather'd strength, 
He would not make his judgment blind ; 
He faced the spectres of the mind 
And laid them : thus he came at length 
To find a stronger faith his own ; 

And Power was with him in the night, 
Which makes the darkness and the light 
And dwells not in the lig'ht alone." 

— Tennyson: "In Memoriam." 

"There is need, bitter need to bring back into men's minds, that to live is noth- 
ing, unless to live be to know Him by whom we live." — Modern Painters, Vol. II, 
Sec. 1. 

The religion of Ruskin was nurtured in soil which might have 
produced a mere formal, ceremonial, service and worship. The creed 
of his home was puritanic and calvinistic, — the doctrines were those 
of the State Episcopal church, which, not only taught, but deter- 
mined and dictated, both the form and subject of prayers and daily 
worship. The eloquently worded petitions of the prayer-book were 
recited with peculiar intonations which the clergy adopted, and the 
forms, and ceremonies, and processions, sometimes came very near 
rivaling the splendor and pomp of the Romish church. 

In such an atmosphere certain souls remained really and deeply 
religious: men and women, to whom the ceremonial w^as impressive 
and typical, and every collect in the prayer-book a prayer which 
lifted their hearts up toward God. But to Ruskin these were 
not inspiring, because they were, very frequently, unaccompanied 
with consistency of life and character, in priest and people, and also 
because they were used to convey narrow conceptions of truth. 

Ruskin's religion had not a vestige of sham or pretence in it. 
It had to be real or nothing. His perfect love of truth made any 
shadow of turning from moral consistency repulsive to him. The 
evangelists of his time were the "literalists" and these he constantly 
chided, in his vigorous way, for inconsistency. 

"Read your Bibles," he wrote in 1874, "honestly and utterly, my 
scrupulous friends, and stand by the consequences, — if you have 



THE LIFE OF JOHN RUSKIN 55 

what true men call 'faith.' .... remember that the Son of Man is 
Lord of the Sabbath, and that not only it is lawful to do good upon 
it, but unlawful, in the strength of what you call keeping one day 
holy, to do evil on other six days, and make those unholy."^ 

Mr. Collingwood, writing of Ruskin, as he was in 1845, says: — 
"He was deeply religious, and found the echo of his thoughts in 
George Herbert, with whom he communed in spirit while he trav- 
elled through the Alps. But the forms of outward religion were los- 
ing their hold over him in proportion as his inward religion became 
more real and intense. It was only a few days after writing these 
lines" that he broke the Sabbath for the first time in his life, by 
climbing a hill after church. That was the first shot in a war, in 
one of the strangest and saddest wars between conscience and reason 
that biography records : strange, because the opposing forces were so 
nearly matched ; and sad, because the struggle lasted until their field 
of battle was desolated before either won a victory. Thirty years 
later, the cleverest of his Oxford hearers drew his portrait under the 
name of the man whose sacred verse was his guide and mainstay in 
this youthful pilgrim's progress, and the words put into his mouth 
summed up with merciless insight the issue of those conflicts. Tor 
I! Who am I that speak to you? Am I a believer? No. I am a 
doubter too. Once I could pray every morning, and go forth to my 
day's labor stayed and comforted. But now I can pray no longer. 
You have taken my God away from me, and I know not where you 
have laid him.' "^ 

Ruskin's references to Herbert, mentioned here by Collingwood, 
may be found in Book VI. of this volume. The change which had 
been going on, in Ruskin's mind, culminated in 1858, when he was 
about 40 years old. This was not only a change of view, — but a re- 
volt : a tearing up of his entire religious faith by the roots. It made 
so deep an impression upon him that it formed the subject of corre- 
spondence with his friends* and resulted in announcements dis- 
crediting what he had written of religion in his earlier days. Twenty 
years later he gave an account of an incident which provoked him to 
declare the change"^ and ten years later still,^ he related the 

1 "Fors," Letter 40. 

2 "Why stand ye all the day idle." (See Book VI.) 

3 "Life of John Ruskin." 

4 See Letters to Chas. Eliot Norton. 
B "Fors," Letter 73. 
epraeterita III: 1. 



56 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

incident, somewhat differently, although substantially the same. 
The story is of his going to a little Waldensian chapel in Turin, 
where a congregation, numbering in all some three or four and 
twenty, of whom fifteen or sixteen were gray haired women. "Their 
solitary and clerkless preacher, a somewhat stunted figure in a 
plain black coat, with a cracked voice, after leading them through 
the languid form of prayer . . . put his utmost zeal into a consolatory 
discourse on the wickedness of the wide world, more especially of 
the plains of Piedmont and city of Turin, and on the exclusive 
favor with God, enjoyed by the between nineteen and twenty-four 
elect members of his congregation. Myself neither cheered nor 
greatly alarmed by this doctrine, I walked back into the condemned 
city, and up into the gallery where Paul Veronese's Solomon and 
the Queen of Sheba glowed in full afternoon light. The gallery 
windows being opened, there came in with the warm air, floating 
swells and falls of military music which seemed to me more devo- 
tional, in their perfect art, tune, and discipline, than anything I 
remembered of evangelical hymns. And as the perfect color and 
sound gradually asserted their power on me, they seemed finally to 
fasten me in the old Jewish faith, that things done delightfully and 
rightly, were always done by the help and in the spirit of God. Of 
course that hour's meditation in the gallery of Turin only con- 
cluded the courses of thought which had been leading me to such 
end through many years. . . . That day, my evangelical beliefs 
were put away, to be debated no more."^ 

It is probable, as Mr. Norton believes, that Ruskin "Never wholly 
recovered from the effects of" "this hard, unsettling revelation."^ 
If however the thought is abroad that he remained, ever after, un- 
der the black cloud of doubt, as to the verities of the Christian re- 
ligion, it becomes a pleasure and a duty, to set forth the gradual 
■change which brought him again into the full blaze of the light 
of scriptural truth, although he never returned to the old forms 
and expressions of creeds. 

Although, as we have seen, his mind reflected a series of para- 
doxies,^ yet, in character, Ruskin was always consistent. At no 
time in his life can it be said that there met in him two opposite 
streams of moral character. All through his years of doubt he pos- 
Bessed all the cardinal virtues in an eminent degree. He was the 
soul of honor — just, benevolent, kind, generous and merciful. 

Those old expressions of creed were to him so many supersti- 

1 Prseterita III : 1. 
'Letters Norton, p. 72. 
3 Chapter IV. 



THE LIFE OF JOHN RUSKIN 57 

"tions and he flung them away with such violence that he was almost 
ready to accept the word ''sceptic" which w^as thrown at him by 
his critics. 

What Henry VanDyke says about "doubt" seems to find illus- 
tration in Ruskin : — "For the most part modern doubt shows a sad 
and plain-drawn face, heavy with grief and dark with apprehen- 
sion."^ But as Carlyle said: "That, with superstition, religion is 
also passing away, seems to us an ungrounded fear. Religion can- 
not pass away. The burning of a little straw may hide the stars of 
the sky, but the stars are there, and will re-appear. On the whole, 
■we must repeat the often-repeated saying, that it is unworthy a re- 
ligious man to view an irreligious one either with aversion or alarm ; 
'or with any other feeling than regret, and hope and brotherly 
■commiseration. If he seek truth is he not our brother, and to be 
pitied? If he do not seek truth, is he not still our brother, and to 
he pitied still more?"" 

And we must remember that Ruskin's change was not alone to- 
wards theology. CoUingwood says: — "Orthodox religion, ortho- 
dox morals and politics, orthodox art and science, — all alike he re- 
jected. And even when kindly Oxford gave him a quasi-academi- 
cal position, it did not bring him, as it brings many a heretic, back 
to the field." Yet, we must repeat, he never departed from the 
orthodoxy of righteousness and scriptural truth. 

In 1867 Ruskin delivered a lecture before a distinguished body 
of scholars, on the occasion of his receiving the degree of LL. D. 
In reporting that lecture the Cambridge Chronicle says: 

"On the younger men he urged the infinite importance of a life 
of virtue and the fact that the hereafter must be spent in God's 
presence or in darkness. Their time in this miracle of a universe 
was but as a moment; with one brief astounded gaze of awe they 
looked on all around them — saw the planets roll, heard the sound 
of the sea, and beheld the surroundings of the earth ; they were 
opened for a moment as a sheet of lightning, and then instantly 
closed again. Their highest ambition during so short a stay should 
be to be known for what they were — to spend those glittering days 
in view of what was to come after them. Then, to the masters of 
this school of science, he urged that their continued prosperity 
must rest on their observance of the command of their Divine Mas- 
ter, in whose name they existed as a society. 'Seek ye first the king- 

i"The Gospel for an Age of Doubt." 
2 "Voltaire." By Thomas Carlyle. 



58 THE RELIGION OF RUSK IN 

dom of God and His righteousness' . . All mere knowledge 
independent of its tendency to a holy life was useless." 

Not much of religious heterodoxy here, — either in letter or spirit. 
Truly this man held the Bible in profound esteem. He rever- 
enced its teachings and quoted it constantly as an authority from 
which there is no appeal. It mattered not what was the subject 
before him: whether he wrote a volume of criticism, — a poem to 
a young lady, — a letter to working men, — or gave a lecture to a 
class of students, the religious spirit pervaded all he said. God was 
recognised in nature and in art; in the affairs of men in personal 
conduct and in general government. 

To young girls he said: — "The sin of the whole world is the sin of 
Judas. Men do not disbelieve their Christ but they sell Him." He 
is talking to university students at Oxford when he says: — "In 
these days you have to guard against the fatalest darkness of the 
two opposite prides: the pride of faith, which imagines that the 
nature of the Deity can be explained by its convictions: and the 
pride of science, which imagines that the energy of the Deity can 
be explained by its analysis." ^ 

If we study Ruskin for art or architecture we miay learn, at least, 
as much of moral and religious truth; we can hardly pass an hour 
with him, in any phase of his work, without finding some biblical 
exposition which brings us new light. 

Nor is it difficult to find his own testimony of his religious ex- 
perience. Indeed, his introspection seems to have been keen and 
sometimes severe. He w^ould probably have given some trouble to 
a Methodist class leader, but the telling of his religious experience 
always bear the mark of strict and honest scrutiny. 

Generous to all and always catholic in spirit, he knew no sectar- 
ian boundary line to hold him back from good men, of whatever 
religious faith. Any one who read his criticisms of the Roman 
Catholic Church would never suspect him of a leaning in that di- 
rection. Yet, at Coniston, he esteemed the work of a priest of that 
church so highly that he contributed a window to his chapel. He 
enjoyed the personal friendship of that remarkable man. Cardinal 
Manning, accepting occasional invitations to his mansion, to quiet 
lunches, and a report grew out of these things that he was "going 
over to the Catholic Church." He promptly set that right, how- 

1 "The Relation of Art to Religion." See Book II. 



THE LIFE OF JOHN RUSKIN 59 

ever, in this fashion, — writing to a friend at Glasgow: — "I shall 
be entirely grateful to you if you will take the trouble to contradict 
any news of this kind, which may be disturbing the minds of my 
Scottish friends. I was, am, and can be, only a Christian Catholic 
in the wide and eternal sense. I have been that these five-and- 
twenty years at least. Heaven keep me from being less as I grow 
older!" A year later he wrote, ''I fear you have scarcely read 
enough of 'Fors'^ to know the breadth of my own creed or com- 
munion. I gladly take the bread, water, wine, or meat, of the 
Lord's Supper and should be equally sure it was His giving, if I 
were myself worthy to receive it, whether the immediate mortal 
hand were the Pope's, the Queen's, or a hedge-side gipsy's." 

A still closer view of his returning faith is revealed in an address 
which he gave to 315 young people of Coniston, in the year 1881. 
He dwelt on a verse of the Sunday School hymn they had been 
singing: "Jesus, here from sin deliver." "That is what we want," 
he said, "to be delivered from our sins. We must look to the Sav- 
iour to deliver us from our sin. It is right we should be punished 
for the sins which we have done; but God loves us, and wishes to 
be kind to us, and to help us, that we may not wilfully sin !" Such 
words from a man of Ruskin's character must be taken as a clear 
indication of his religious mind. 

In 1886 he wrote to a lady at Coniston : — "How can you ever be 
sad, looking forward to eternal life with all whom you love, and 
God over all. It is only so far as I lose hold of that hope, that any- 
thing is ever a trial to me."" 

That there were cloud days, and even years, of religious shadow 
for Ruskin is a fact that has perhaps been over-stated. But the rever- 
ent spirit and devout attitude of his mind towards God, and all 
things divine, is always present in all his works. With him the 
fundamental truths of the Christian religion were never subjects 
of dispute. Judging by a close study of his works, we should say 
that he rarely ever wrote or spoke on any subject, but the truth 
and word of God were present in his mind as an influence and 

^ "Meantime, don't be afraid that I am going to become a Roman Catholic, or 
that I am one, in disguise. I can no more become a iSo man-Catholic, than again 
an Evangelical-Protestant. I am a 'Catholic' of those Catholics, to whom the 
Catholic Epistle of St. James is addressed — 'the Twelve Tribes which are scat- 
tered abroad' — the literally or spiritually wandering Israel of all the Earth." — 
*'Fors," Letter 76. 

2 "Hortus Inclusis." 



6o THE 'RELIGION OF RUSK IN 

a memory. While he did not regard all parts of the Bible as of 
equal authority, he never failed to recognize it as the Supreme 
Book. Other books were quoted: — poets were esteemed and loved, 
but the Scriptures were reverenced and cited as final. 

In 1873 he wrote: — "You will find, alike throughout the record 
of the law and the promises of the gospel, that there is, indeed, 
forgiveness with God, and Christ, for the passing sins of the hot 
heart, but none for the eternal and inherent sins of the cold. 
'Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy;' find it you 
written anywhere that the unmerciful shall? 'Her sins, which are 
many, are forgiven, for she loved much.' But have you record 
of any one's sins being forgiven who loved not at all? ... At my 
present age of fifty-five, in spite of some enlarged observations of 
what modern philosophers call the reign of law, I perceive more 
distinctly than ever the reign of a spirit of mercy and truth, — 
infinite in pardon and purification for its wandering and faultful 
children, who have yet love in their hearts."^ 

And, at sixty-six, he repeated much that he said of his early 
Bible instruction and added this: — "It is strange that of all the 
pieces that my mother thus taught me, that which cost me most 
to learn, and which was to my child's mind, chiefly repulsive — 
the 119th Psalm — has now become of all the most precious to me, 
in its overflowing and glorious passion of love for the law of God, 
in opposition to the abuse of it by modern preachers of what they 
imagine to be His gospel."^ 

And once again, in the same book, he says of this early period, — 
"Knowing the Song of Moses and the Sermon on the Mount by 
heart and half the Apocalypse besides, I was in no need of tutor- 
ship either in the majesty or simplicity of English words." 

A little later, he wrote in "The Bible of Amiens," "It was from 
the Bible that I learned the symbols of Homer and the faith of 
Horace : the duty enforced upon me in early youth of reading every 
word of the gospels and prophecies, as if written by the hand of 
God, gave me the habit of awed attention." 

Between these two dates, (viz.: 1873-1877) he wrote of the shad- 
ows, of which we have spoken, thus: — 

"What is there left?" You will find what was left, as, in much 

^"Fors,'' Letter 42, 
sPraeterita, Chap. II. 



THE LIFE OF JOHN RUSKIN 6i 

darkness and sorrow of heart I gathered it, variously taught in my 
books, written between 1858 and 1874. It is all sound and good, 
as far as it goes: whereas all that went before was so mixed with 
protestant egotism and insolence, that, as you have probably heard, 
I won't republish, in their first form, any of those former books. 
Thus then it went with me till 1874, when I had lived sixteen 
full years with 'the religion of humanity,' for rough and strong 
and sure foundation of everything.'" 

Two years later, 1879, he wrote his "Letters to the Clergy," which 
made a tremendous stir among the clergy of the Church of Eng- 
land. These letters were edited and published by the Rev. F. Mal- 
leson, a distinguished clergyman, to whom they were originally ad- 
dressed as Secretary of a North of England Clerical Society. In 
his introduction Mr. Malleson says: — The letters "originated sim- 
ply in a proposal of mine, which met with so ready a response 
that it seemed like a simultaneous thought," Mr. Malleson's view 
of Ruskin's religious mind is expressed in the following editorial 
notes: — "We have plenty elsewhere of doctrine and dogma, and 
undefinable shades of theological opinion. Let us turn at last to 
practical questions presented for our consideration by an eminent 
layman whose tield of work lies quite as much in religion and eth- 
ics, as it does, reaching to so splendid an eminence, in art. A man 
is wanted to show both clergy and laity something of the full force 
and meaning of Gospel teaching. ... As a whole, the standard 
taken is, as I firmly believe, speaking only for myself, lofty and 
Christian to the extent of an almost ideal perfection."" 

The reader must bear in mind that this is the expression of a 
clergyman of the Church of England more than twenty years after 
'Ruskin's revolt, and four or five years after the period of which he 
■writes as having passed through "much darkness and sorrow of 
heart." 

A few extracts from these letters will be of interest to many. 
The subject chosen by Ruskin upon which to address the 
clergy was "The Lord's Prayer and the Church." 

"My meaning, in saying that the Lord's Prayer might be made 
a foundation of Gospel-'teaching, was not that it contained all that 
Christian ministers have to teach, but that it contains what all 
Christians are agreed upon as first to be taught; and that no good 
parish-working pastor in any district of the world but would be 

* "Fors," Letter 76. 

2 "Letters to the Clergy." 



62 TEE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

glad to take his part in making it clear and living to his congre- 
gation. And the first clause of it, of course rightly explained, 
gives us the ground of what is surely a mighty part of the Gospel — 
its 'first great commandment/ namely, that we have a Father 
whom we can love, and are required to love, and to desire to be 
with Him in Heaven, wherever that may be. And to declare that 
we have a loving Father, whose mercy is over all His works, and 
whose will and law is so lovely and lovable that it is sweeter than 
honey, and more precious than gold, to those who can 'taste' and 
'see' that the Lord is good — this, surely, is a most pleasant and 
glorious good message and spell to bring to men." — Letter V. 

"To my layman's mind, of practical needs in the present state 
of the church, nothing is so immediate as that of explaining to the 
congregation the meaning of being gathered in His name, and 
having Him in the midst of them." — Letter VI. 

"Lest, in any discussion of such question, it might be, as it too 
often is, alleged that 'the Lord looketh upon the heart,' etc., let me 
be permitted to say — with as much positiveness as may express my 
deepest conviction — that, while indeed it is the Lord's business to 
look upon the heart, it is the pastor's to look upon the hands and 
the lips; and that the foulest oaths of the thief are in the ears of 
God, sinless as the hawk's cry, or the gnat's murmur, compared 
to the responses in the church service, on the lips of the usurer and 
the adulterer." — Letter VI. 

"I fancy that the mind of the most faithful Christian is quite 
led away from its proper hope, by dwelling on the reign — or com- 
ing again — of Christ, which, indeed, they are to look for, and 
watch'ioT, but not to pray for. Their prayer is to be for the greater 
kingdom to which He, risen and having all His enemies under 
His feet, is to surrender His, 'that God may be All in AIL' And, 
though the greatest, it is that everlasting kingdom which the poor- 
est of us can advance. We cannot hasten Christ's coming. 'Of that 
day and the hour, knoweth no man.' But the kingdom of God 
is as a grain of mustard-seed: — we can sow of it; it is as a foam- 
globe of leaven: — we can mingle it; and its glory and its joy are 
that even the birds of the air can lodge in the branches thereof." 
—Letter VII. 

*'in the parable in Luke, the bread asked for is shown to be also, 
and chiefly, the Holy Spirit (Luke 11:13), and the prayer, ^'Give 
us each day our daily bread' is, in its fulness, the disciples' 'Lord, 
evermore give us this bread.' . . . 'Children, have ye here any 
meat?' must ultimately be always the greater spiritual one: 'Chil- 
dren, have ye here any Holy Spirit?' or, 'Have ye not heard yet 
whether there be any?" and, instead of a Holy Ghost the Lord and 
Giver of Life, do you onlv believe in an unholy mammon. Lord 
and Giver of Death?' "—Letter IX, 



THE LIFE OF JOHN RUSKIN 63 

"Is not this last clause of it, (The Lord's Prayer) a petition not 
only for the restoration of Paradise, but of Paradise in which there 
shall be no deadly fruit, or, at least no tempter to praise it. . . . 
And is it not for want of this special directness and simplicity of 
petition and of the sense of its acceptance that the whole nature 
of prayer has been doubted in our hearts, and disgraced by our 
lips; that we are afraid to ask God's blessing on the earth, when 
the scientific people tell us He has made different arrangements 
to curse at; and that instead of obeying, without fear or debate, the 
plain order, 'Ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full,' 
we sorrowfully sink back into the apology for prayer, that it is a 
wholesome exercis3, even when fruitless,' and that we ought piously 
always to suppose that the text really means no more than *Ask, 
and ye shall not receive, that your joy may be empty f " 

In 1880 Mr. Ruskin wrote an epilogue to these letters which is 
published in the same volume, from which the following passage 
is taken as indicating that he held the English prayer-book in 
reverence: — "If people are taught to use the Liturgy rightly and 
reverently, it will bring them all good; and for some thirty 
years of my life I used to read it always through to my servant and 
myself, if we had no Protestant church to go to, in Alpine or Ital- 
ian villages." 

Commenting on these prayers he has much to say of their beauty 
of expression but, he is very severe in his criticisms of many who 
use them. "To acknowledge sin is indeed different from confess- 
ing it," he says : — "but it cannot be done at a minute's notice ; and 
goodness is a different thing from mercy, but it is by no means 
God's infinite goodness that forgives our badness, but that judges 
it." ..." 'Who livest and reignest.' Right; but how many congre- 
gations understand what the two words mean? That God is a liv- 
ing God and not a dead law; and that He is a reigning God, put- 
ting wrong things to rights, and that sooner or later, with a strong 
hand and a rod of iron, and not at all with a soft sponge and warm 
water, washing everybody as clean as a baby every Sunday morn- 
ing, whatever dirty work they may have been about all the week." 

In 1878 Ruskin was twice an invited guest at the Gladstone home 
at Hawarden, North Wales. One result of these visits was a cor- 
respondence with the Misses Gladstone, during the years which 
followed to 1887, and a volume of ^'Letters to M. G. and H. G." 
is in circulation, which furnishes further evidence of the essentially 
reliffious character of Ruskin's mind. In this volume we find ex- 



64 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

tracts from the great statesman's diary in reference to the visits 
alluded to above. He says : — 

"Mr, Ruskin came; we had much conversation, interesting of 
course, as it must always be with him." .... "In 
some respects an unrivalled guest, and those important 
respects too. . . . Mr. Ruskin came; health better, and no di- 
minution of charm." . . . "Walk with the Duke of Argyle, Mr. Rus- 
kin and party." . . . "Mr. Ruskin at dinner developed his political 
opinions. They aim at the restoration of the Judaic system, and 
exhibit a mixture of virtuous absolutism and Christian socialism. 
All in his charming and benevolent manner." 

The introduction to this volume of letters is by the Hon. Geo. 
Wyndham, who was for years a very intimate friend of the Glad- 
stone family. Mr. Wyndham says it chronicles a "visit paid by 
Ruskin, the rhetorician, t^.acher, and diviner of the beautiful, who 
yet disbelieved in its acceptability by man, to Gladstone, the states- 
man, theologian, and prophet of moral energy in the practical 
affairs of a nation's life, who ever believed, not alone in the merits 
of his cause, but in the certainty of its triumph. They tell of the 
talk that passed between these two, who seemed opposite in aim and 
were so in method; approaching life, whether as a problem to be 
solved or a task to be accomplished, by divergent paths and with 
sentiments widely sundered; the one, in grim earnestness and ab- 
solute faith; the other, with sunlit grace playing over all but ab- 
solute despair." A few extracts from this volume will be of inter- 
est here: 

"Something like a little amicable duel took place at one time 
between Ruskin and Mr. G., when Ruskin directly attacked his 
host as a 'leveller.' 'You see you think one man as good as an- 
other, and all men equally competent to judge aright on political 
questions; whereas I am a believer in an aristocracy.' And 
straight came the answer from Mr. Gladstone, 'Oh dear, no! I am 
nothing of the sort. I am a firm believer in the aristocratic prin- 
ciple — the rule of the best. I am an out-and-out inequalitarian' 
a confession which Ruskin greeted with intense delight, clapping 
his hands triumphantly." 

The same volume contains a paper by Canon Scott Holland, who 
had the felicity to be present at the meeting of these two remark- 
able men. Mr. Holland says : — 

"So the two prophets met, and were knit together by an 
affectionate reverence for one another which never failed. Each 



THE LIFE OF JOHN RUSKIN 65 

"was to go his own way and do his separate work, and it was impos- 
sible that they should co-operate together. But for all that, they 
learnt to know that they were fighting on the same side in the great 
warfare between good and ill ; that they had the same cause at heart ; 
that they 'both trusted in the same supremacy of conscience over all 
material things, and in the hatefulness of lust and cruelty and 
wrong. Their spirits drew together though their ways lay so far 
apart ; and this because, for both, life had its deep root in piety, and 
its one and only consum'mation in God." 

In one of these letters we get a glimpse of Ruskin's view of the 
future life. Writing on the death of Carlyle, whom he regarded 
as his great master and teacher, he says: — 

"The death of Carlyle is no sorrow to me. It is, I believe, not an end 
— but a beginning of his real life. Nay, perhaps also of mine. My re- 
(morse, every day he lived, for having not enough loved him in the days 
gone by, is not greater now, but less, in the hope that he knows what 
I am feeling about him at this — and at all other — moments." This 
was written in 1881. The volume closes with the following eloquent 
words of Ruskin's: — "As I grow older and older, I recognise the 
truth of the preacher's saying, 'Desire shall fail and the mourners 
go about the streets;' and I content myself with saying, to whoso 
it may concern, that the thing is verily thus, whether they will hear 
or whether they will forbear. No man more than I has ever loved 
the places where God's honour dwells, or yielded truer allegiance 
to the teaching of His evident servants. No man at this time grieves 
more for the danger of the Church which supposes him her enemy, 
while she whispers procrastinating pax vohiscum in answer to the spur- 
ious kiss of those who would fain toll curfew over the last fires of 
English faith, and watch the sparrow find nest where she may lay 
her young around the altars of the Lord." 

A lady, to whom Ruskin dedicated one of his works, writes thus 
of these remarkable letters:^ "They are like the 'foam globes of 
leaven,' I might say they have exercised my mind very much. 
Things in them which at first seemed rather startling, prove on 
closer examination to be full of deep truth. The suggestions in 
them lead to 'great searchings of heart.' There is much with which 
I entirely agree; much over which to ponder. What an insight 
into human nature is shown in the remark that though we are so 
ready to call ourselves 'miserable sinners,' we resent being accused 
of any special fault." 

Ruskin was so thoroughly radical in his view of truth, and in 

1 Miss Susanna Beever. 



66 TEE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

his expression of it, that much that he said seemed to many re- 
ligious people as antagonistic, — ^almost revolutionary, — some 
thought, sceptical. But his most intimate American friend speaks 
of "the essentially religious character of Ruskin's disposition,"* 
— and if emphasis is laid on that word "essentially" we have in 
these words a perfect description. In very essence his disposition 
was religious ; — ^all the elements of his moral being combined in one 
deeply profound, intensely spiritual man. Whatever the theme 
upon which he worked, — whether in art, science, economy, or in 
benevolent enterprise, he lived and moved and breathed in a spirit- 
ual altitude such as few men attain unto. 

Very much of what he said seemed to be contrary to accepted 
doctrine because he saw things so acutely and spoke of them as he 
saw them. Writing to the clergy he said: — "You believe what you 
wish to believe; teach that it is wicked to doubt it, and remain at 
rest and in much self-satisfaction. I believe what I find to be true, 
whether I like it or dislike it. And I teach other people that the 
chief of 'all wickedness is to tell lies in God's service, and to dis- 
grace our Master and destroy His sheep as involuntary wolves." 

Although much of Ruskin's work was, in its nature technical, yet 
he always found a place for the presentation of religious truth, — so 
much so, — that he was criticised for preaching instead of teaching. 
But he held that no teaching could be full or true which left out 
the things of the higher life: — there could be no beauty without 
the sky, — no glory without the sun, — no life without God. 

As evidence of all this, the reader is invited to peruse the selec- 
tions which form a practical review of his life and work, in the 
continuation of this volume. If special examples are called for, it 
will be acknowledged that his greater and more profound writings 
should be appealed to: — "Modern Painters," "Stones of Venice," 
and "Seven Lamps," although other of his works may be preferred 
by some. Carlyle, for instance, gives preference to "The Eagle's 
Nest." 

Well! let us take these four, — ^and if we chance to open at the 
beginning, or turn to the closing passages, we find sentences, preg- 
nant of spiritual meaning, profoundly reverent and full of ultimate 
dependence upon the Divine in all things. 

» Charles Eliot Norton in a letter to the writer. 



THE LIFE OF JOHN RUSKIN 67 

The introduction to "Modern Painters" (Vol. I) closes with this 
appeal for a recognition of the good in men while they live: — 

"He who has once stood beside the grave, to look back upon the 
companionship which has been forever closed, feeling how impo- 
tent there are the wild love, or the keen sorrow, to give one in- 
stant's pleasure to the pulseless heart, or atone in the lowest meas- 
ure to the departed spirit for the hour of unkindness, will scarcely 
for the future incur that debt to the heart, which can only be dis- 
charged to the dust. But the lesson which men receive as indi- 
viduals, they do not learn as nations. Again and again they have 
seen their noblest descend into the grave, and have thought it 
enough to garland the tombstone when they had not crowned the 
brow, and to pay the honor to the ashes which they had denied to 
the spirit. Let it not displease them that they are bidden, amidst 
the tumult and the dazzle of their busy life, to listen for the few 
voices, and watch for the few lamps, which God has toned and 
lighted to charm and to guide them, that they may not learn 
their sweetness by their silence, nor their light by their decay." 

The last chapter of "Modern Painters" is entitled "Peace" and 
closes with the following: 

" 'Thy kingdom come,' we are bid to ask them! But how shall 
it come? With power and great glory, it is written; and yet not 
with observation, it is also written. Strange kingdom! Yet its 
strangeness is renewed to us with every dawn. 

*'This kingdom it is not in our power to bring; but it is, to re- 
ceive. Nay, it has come already, in part; but not received, be- 
cause men love chaos best; and the night, with her daughters. 
That is still the only question for us, as in the old Elias days, 'If ye 
will receive it.' With pains it may be shut out still from many a 
dark place of cruelty; by sloth it may be still unseen for many a 
glorious hour. But the pain of shutting it out must grow greater 
and greater: — harder, every day, that struggle of man with man in 
the abyss, and shorter wages for the field's work. But it is still at our 
choice. . . . The choice is no vague or doubtful one. High on the 
desert mountain, full described, sits throned the tempter, with his 
old promise — the kingdoms of this world, and the glory of them. 
He still calls you to your labor, as Christ to your rest; — labor and 
sorrow, base desire, and cruel hope." 

The first chapter of "Stones of Venice" (Vol. I) opens with a 
remark upon sin as the cause of the fall of thrones and nations: — 

"Since the first dominion of men was asserted over the ocean, 
three thrones, of mark beyond all others, have been set upon its 
sands: the thrones of Tyre, Venice, and England. Of the first 
of these great powers only the memory remains ; of the second, the 



68 TEE RELIGION^ OR RUSKIN. 

ruin; the third, which inherits their greatness, if it forget their 
example, may be led through prouder eminence to less pitied de- 
struction. 

"The exaltation, the sin, and the punishment of Tyre have been 
recorded for us, in perhaps the most touching words ever uttered 
by the Prophets of Israel against the cities of the stranger. But 
we read them as a lovely song; and close our ears to the sternness 
of their warning: for the very depth of the fall of Tyre has blinded 
us to its reality, and we forget, as we watch the bleaching of the 
rocks between the sunshine and the sea, that they were once "as in 
Eden, the garden of God." 

The last chapter (Stones of Venice, Vol. 3) contains the fol- 
lowing on Co-operation with the Divine: — 

"Whether the opportunity is to be permitted us to redeem the 
hours that we have lost; whether He, in whose sight a thousand 
years are as one day, has appointed us to be tried by the continued 
possession of the strange powers with which He has lately endowed 
us; or whether the periods of childhood and of probation are to 
cease together, and the youth of mankind is to be one which shall 
prevail over death, and bloom for ever in the midst of a new heaven 
and a new earth, are questions with which we have no concern. It 
is indeed right that we should look for, and hasten, so far as in us 
lies, the coming of the Day of God; but not that we should check 
any human efforts by anticipations of its approach. We shall 
hasten it best by endeavoring to work out the tasks that are ap- 
pointed for us here; and, therefore, reasoning as if the world were 
to continue under its existing dispensation, and the powers which 
have just been granted to us were to be continued through myriads 
of future ages." Ch. IV. 

From the introductory chapter of "Seven Lamps" we take this 
superb note on the Providence of God and the adaptation of the 
Scriptures to all men and all eircumstances : 

"We treat God with irreverence by banishing Him from our 
thoughts, not by referring to His will on slight occasions. His is 
not the finite authority or intelligence which cannot be troubled 
with small things. There is nothing so small but that we may 
honor God by asking His guidance of it, or insult Him by taking 
it into our own hands ; and what is true of the Deity is equally true 
of His Revelation. We use it most reverently when most habit- 
ually: our insolence is in ever acting without reference to it, our 
true honoring of it is in its universal application. I have been 
blamed for the familiar introduction of its sacred words. I am 
grieved to have given pain by so doing; but my excuse must be my 
wish that those words were made the ground of every argument and 



TEE LIFE OF JOHN RUSK IN 69 

the test of every action, "We have them not often enough on our 
lips, nor deeply enough in our memories, nor loyally enough in our 
lives. The snow, the vapor, and the stormy wind fulfill His word. 
Are our acts and thoughts lighter and wilder than these — that we 
should forget it?" 

The last chapter on the "Lamp of Obedience" closes thus: — 
"I have paused, not once nor twice, as I wrote, and often have 
checked the course of what might otherwise have been importunate 
persuasion, as the thought has crossed me, how soon all architecture 
may be vain, except that which is not made with hands. There is 
something ominous in the light which has enabled us to look back 
with disdain upon the ages among whose lovely vestiges we have 
been wandering. I could smile when I hear the hopeful exultation 
of many, at the new reach of worldly science, and vigor of worldly 
effort; as if we were again at the beginning of days. There is 
thunder on the horizon as well as dawn. The sun was risen upon 
the earth when Lot entered into Zoar." 

Again, so far from exalting the intellect above the heart, or 
knowledge above faith, Kuskin held the soul-value of man as 
supreme. In his concluding chapter of "Stones of Venice" he 
wrote : — 

"It must be felt at once, that the increase of knowledge, merely 
as such, does not make the soul larger or smaller; that, in the sight 
of God, all the knowledge man can gain is as nothing: but that 
the soul, for which the great scheme of redemption was laid, be 
it ignorant or be it wise, is all in all; and in the activity, strength, 
health, and well-being of this soul, lies the main difference, in His 
sight, between one man and another. And that which is all in 
all in God's estimate is also, be assured, all in all in man's labor; 
and to have the heart open, and the eyes clear, and the emotions 
and thoughts warm and quick, and not the knowing of this or the 
other fact, is the state needed for all mighty doing in this world. 
And therefore finally, for this, the weightiest of all reasons, let us 
take no pride in our knowledge. We may, in a certian sense, be 
proud of being immortal; we may be proud of being God's chil- 
dren ; we may be proud of loving, thinking, seeing, and of all that 
we are by no human teaching : but not of what we have been taught 
by rote; not of the ballast and freight of the ship of the spirit, 
but only of its pilotage, without which all the freight will only sink 
it faster, and strew the sea more richly with its ruin. There is 
not at this moment a youth of twenty, having received what we 
moderns ridiculously call education, but he knows more of every- 
thing, except the soul, than Plato or St. Paul did; but he is not 
for that reason a greater man, or fitter for his work, or more fit to 
be heard by others, than Plato or St. Paul." 



70 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

An ecstatic passage on "Wisdom" opens the first lecture of "The 

Eagle's Nest:" 

"Over these three kingdoms of imagination, art, and science, 
there reigns a virtue of faculty, which from all time, and by all 
great people, has been recognized as the appointed ruler and guide 
of every method of labour, or passion of soul; and the most glo- 
rious recompense of the toil, and crown of the ambition of man. 
'She is more precious than rubies, and all the things thou canst de- 
eire are not to be compared unto her. Lay fast hold upon her; 
let her not go ; keep her, for she is thy life.' . . . The 
result of the inquiry will be, that instead of regarding none of the 
sources of happiness, she regards nothing else; that she measures 
all worthiness by pure felicity; that we are permitted to conceive 
her as the cause even of gladness to God — 'I was daily His delight, 
rejoicing always before Him,' — and that we are commanded to 
know her as queen of the populous world, 'rejoicing in the habi- 
table parts of the earth, and whose delights are with the sons of 
men.' " 

We do not hesitate to affirm that the grand secret of Ruskin, 
whether we view him as a moral teacher, or, as "the first prose 
writer of his century "i is that he, like Shakspeare and other great 
poets, drew their inspiration from Scriptures, It might indeed 
prove a profitable task to the sceptic to enquire what great English 
literature he can find that is not so inspired? We claim them 
all, — including some whose professed faith was opposed to it; — ^all 
the poets worthy the name, — all the great authors of fiction, — all 
the greatest and best of modern historians; — even the scientists, 
whose very business and function it is to look towards the material, 
yet see God in and through Nature, and offer tribute to the Bible, 
while every great statesman of modern times bow reverently before 
the name of Jesus, and the rulers of kingdoms acknowledge Him 
King and "Crown Him Lord of All." 

■ "It shall come to pass that at evening time it shall he light." 
Zech. 14:7. Mr. Collingwood could hardly have chosen a more 
appropriate text with which to close his loving task of writing the 
life of his friend, than in the selection of this. The passage over 
life's ocean had not been a great calm. Ruskin, who never knew 
a struggle for bread for himself, yet constantly battled for it for 
others. All along he travailed in pain for the world of sin and 
sorrow, as he saw it. 

* "Great Books as Life Teachers." Hillis. 



THE LIFE OF JOHN RUSKIN 71 

"I do not know," he said, "what my England desires, or how 
long she will choose to do as she is doing now ; — with her right hand 
casting away the souils of men, and with her left the gifts of God. 

"In the prayers which she dictates to her children, she tells 
them to fight against the world, the flesh, and the devil. Some day, 
perhaps, it may also occur to her as desirable to tell those children 
what she means by this. What is the world which they are to 'fight 
with,' and how does it differ from the world which they are to 'get 
on in?' The explanation seems to me the more needful, because I 
do not, in the book we profess to live by, find anything very distinct 
about fighting with the world. I find something about fighting 
with the rulers of its darkness, and something also about overcom- 
ing it; but it does not follow that this conquest is to be by hostility, 
since evil may be overcome with good. But I find it written very 
distinctly that God loved the world, and that Christ is the light 
of it. 

"What the much-used words, therefore, mean, I cannot tell. But 
this, I believe, they should mean. That there is, indeed, one world 
which is full of care, and desire, and hatred: a world of war, of 
which Christ is not the light, which indeed is without light, and 
has never heard the great 'Let there be.' Which is, therefore, in 
truth, as yet no world; but chaos, on the face of which, moving, 
the Spirit of God yet causes men to hope that a world will come. 
The better one, they call it: perhaps they might, more wisely, call 
it the real one. Also, I hear them speak continually of going to it, 
rather than of its coming to them ; which, again, is strange,^ for in 
that prayer which they had straight from the lips of the Light of 
the world, and which He apparently thought sufficient prayer for 
them, there is not anything about going to another world; only 
something of another government coming into this; or rather, not 
another, but the only government, — that government which will 
constitute it a world indeed." — Modern Painters, Vol. 5. Closing 
chapter on Peace. 

Mr. Ruskin lived to see the dawn of the new century. The nine- 
teenth century was not yet nineteen years old when he was born, 
and at past eighty years of age he quietly passed away without a 
struggle. Among the numerous floral and other tributes, (more 
than a hundred and twenty-five) one from the village tailor was, 
perhaps the most striking and significant; it bore the words: — 
"There was a man sent from God, and his name was John." 

In the business world it is customary to estimate the wealth of 
men and nations by their material possessions, but when the final 
balance sheet shall be recorded it will be found that its most precious 



72 THE RELIGION OP, RUSKIN 

assets are the men and women who have given themselves for the 
world; — the prophets — 

"Bards, Patriots, Martyrs, Sages, 
The noble of all ages 
Whose deeds crown history's pages 
And Time's great volume make." 

As he drew near his mortal end John Ruskin's 'belief in immor- 
tality grew stronger and brighter. His faith in God was as simple 
as that of a child. During his declining years his mind was often 
clouded, but in the intervals of clear thought he would softly mur- 
mur, over and over, the lines of Tennyson: 

"Sunset and evening star. 

And one clear call for me ; 
And may there be no moaning of the bar, 
When I put out to sea." 

On the twentieth morning of January, 1900, he calmly fell 
asleep in that home at Coniston, whose bright blue skies and calm 
lake had cheered his last days. We cannot do better than close our 
sketch of his life with words of his own, inspired as they are of the 
future hope. 

"And perfect the day shall be, when it is of all men understood 
that the beauty of Holiness must be in labour as well as in rest. 
Nay! more if it may be, in labour! in our strength, rather than 
in our weakness, and in the choice of what we shall work for 
through the six days, and know to be good at their evening time, 
than in the choice of what we pray for on the seventh, of reward or 
repose. With the multitude that keep holiday, we may perhaps 
sometimes vainly have gone up to the house of the Lord, and vainly 
there asked for what we fancied would be mercy; but for the hw 
who labour as the Lord would have them, the mercy needs no 
seeking, and their wide home no hallowing. Surely goodness and 
mercy shall follow them, all the days of their life ; and they shall 
dwell in the house of the Lord— FOR EVER."' 

1 Lectures on Art 



BOOK SECOND 

Religious Thought in Art 



RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN ART 



MODERN PAINTERS. 
Vol. I. (1843.) 

Part I. Of General Principles. 

Sect. 1. Nature of Ideas — 7 Chaps. 
Sect. 2. Of Power— 3 Chaps. 

Part II. Of Truth. 

Sect. 1. General Principles — 7 Chaps. 

Sect. 2. General Truths — 5 Chaps. 

Sect. 3. Of Truths of Skies— 5 Chaps. 

Sect. 4. Of Truths of Earth— 4 Chaps. 

Sect. 5. Of Truth of Water— 3 Chaps. 

Sect. 6. Of Truth of Vegetation— 3 Chaps. 

The first volume of Modern Painters was published when Ruskin 
(at 23) was a student at the University. It did not bear the name 
of the author but was issued under his nom de plume, "Kata 
Phusin." It was Ruskin's first great work of criticism, but such was 
its unmistakable acceptance and power, that it clearly indicated 
the real mission of the author; he laid aside the role of Poet with 
which his previous work seemed to invest him, and entered the arena 
of battle for principles, with all that intensity and earnestness which 
characterised his labors for half a century. Not that he ceased to be 
poetical, for at no time of his life did he fail to express himself in 
the highest form of prose-poetry. 

The origin and purpose of this volume of Modern Painters are an- 
nounced by the author himself in his first preface: 

"The work now laid before the public originated in indignation at 
the shallow and false criticism of periodicals of the day on the works 
of the great living artist to whom it principally refers. It was in- 

75 



76 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

tended to be a short pamphlet, reprobating the matter and style of 
those critiques, and pointing out their perilous tendency, as guides of 
public feeling. ... Of whatever character the work may be 
considered, the motives which led me to undertake it must not be 
mistaken. No zeal for the reputation of any individual, no personal 
feeling of any kind, has the slightest weight or influence with me. 
. But when public taste seems plunging deeper and deeper into 
degradation day by day, and when the press universally exerts such 
power as it possesses to direct the feeling of the nation more com- 
pletely to all that is theatrical, affected, and false in art; while it 
vents its ribald buffooneries on the most exalted truth, and the 
highest idea of landscape, that this or any other age has ever wit- 
nessed it becomes the imperative duty of all who have any percep- 
tion or knowledge of what is really great in art, and any desire for 
its advancement in England, to come fearlessly forward, regardless 
of such individual interests as are likely to be injured by the knowl- 
edge of what is good and right, to declare and demonstrate, where- 
ever they exist, the essence and the authority of the Beautiful and 
the True." 

These prefatory statements are, in a great measure, the fore- 
word of all Ruskin's work. 

In a second preface, to a later edition of this volume, he writes of 
a common fault of critics. His words of reprobation are as need- 
ful at the present time as when they were written, more than sixty 
years ago: ''Nothing, perhaps, bears on the face of it more appear- 
ance of folly, ignorance, and impertinence, than any attempt to di- 
minish the honor of those to whom the assent of many generations 
has assigned a throne. . . . The envious and incompetent have usu- 
ally been the leaders of attack, content if, like the foulness of the 
earth, they may attract to themselves notice by their noisomeness, or, 
like its insects, exalt themselves by virulence into visibility. ... Be 
it remembered, that the spirit of detraction is detected only when un- 
successful, and receives least punishment where it effects the greatest 
injury; and it cannot but be felt that there is as much danger that 
the rising of new stars should be concealed by the mists which are 
unseen, as that those throned in heaven should be darkened by the 
clouds which are visible." 

Evidently, Ruskin, at a very early period of his life, appreciated 
the enormous influence of the periodical Press of his day, which had 
been mainly instrumental in consigning the work of the great 
English Artist to obscurity, and he realized that no mere skirmish 
battle would win for the world the right place, or a true estimate, of 
the wealth of art which it possessed in those masterly paintings, now 
recognized as among the most priceless of the World's Art treasures. 



RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN ART 77 

This second preface, of forty pages, is itself an able defence of the 
•whole position taken in the battle and it closes with the following: 

"For many a year we have heard nothing with respect to the works 
of Turner but accusations of their want of truth. To every observa- 
tion on their power, sublimity, or beauty, there has been but one re- 
ply : They are not like nature. I therefore took my opponents on 
their own ground, and demonstrated, by thorough investigation of 
actual facts, that Turner is like nature, and paints more of nature 
than any man who ever lived. I expected this proposition (the 
foundation of all my future efforts) would have been disputed with 
desperate struggles, and that I should have had to fight my way to 
my position inch by inch. Not at all. My opponents yield me the 
field at once." 

child: — FATHER OF THE MAN. 

There is a singular sense in which the child may peculiarly be 
said to be father of the man. In many arts and attainments, the 
first and last stages of progress — the infancy and the consumma- 
tion — have many features in common; while the intermediate 
stages are wholly unlike either, and are farthest from the right. 
Thus it is in the progress of a painter's handling. We see the per- 
fect child, — the absolute beginner, using of necessity a broken, 
imperfect, inadequate line, which, as he advances, becomes gradu- 
ally firm, severe, and decided. Yet before he becomes a perfect 
artist, this severity and decision will again be exchanged for a light 
and careless stroke, which in many points will far more resemble that 
of his childhood than of his middle age — differing from it only by 
the consummate effect wrought out by the apparentlv inadequate 
means. So it is in many matters of opinion. Our first and last 
coincide, though on different grounds ; it is the middle stage which is 
farthest from the truth. Childhood often holds a truth with its fee- 
ble fingers, which the grasp of manhood cannot retain, — which it is 
the pride of utmost age to recover. — Preface to 2nd Edition. 

LANDSCAPE PAINTING HAS NOT ANSWERED ITS END. 

"Whatever influence we may be disposed to admit in the great 
■works of sacred art, no doubt can, I think, be reasonably entertained 
as to the utter inutility of all that has been hitherto accomplished 
by the painters of landscape. No moral end has been answered, no 
permanent good effected, by any of their works. They may have 
amused the intellect, or exercised the ingenuity, but they never have 
spoken to the heart. Landscape art has never taught us one deep or 
holy lesson ; it has not recorded that which is fleeting, nor penetrated 
that which was hidden, nor interpreted that which was obscure; it 
has never made us feel the wonder, nor the power, nor the glory of 
the universe ; it has not prompted to devotion, nor touched with aw^e. 



78 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

its power to move and exalt the heart has been fatally abused, and 
perished in the abusing. That which ought to have been a witness 
to the omnipotence of God, has become an exhibition of the dexteri- 
ty of man, and that which should have lifted our thoughts to the 
throne of the Deity, has encumbered them with the inventions of 
his creatures. — Preface to 2nd Edition. 

GREAT PAINTINGS AND THE HONOR OP GOD. 

I assert with sorrow, that all hitherto done in landscape, by those 
commonly conceived its masters, has never prompted one holy 
thought in the minds of nations. It has begun and ended in ex- 
hibiting the dexterities of individuals, and conventionalities of sys- 
tems. Filling the world with the honor of Claude and Salvator, it 
has never once tended to the honor of God. 

Does the reader start in reading these last words, as if they were 
those of wild enthusiasm, — as if I were lowering the dignity of re- 
ligion by supposing that its cause could be advanced by such 
means? His surprise proves my position. It does sound like wild, 
like absurd enthusiasm, to expect any definite moral agency in the 
painters of landscape; but ought it so to sound? Are the gorgeous- 
ness of the visible hue, the glory of the realized form, instruments in 
the artist's hand so ineffective, that they can answer no nobler pur- 
pose than the amusement of curiosity, or the engagement of idle- 
ness? Must it not be owing to gross neglect or misapplication of 
the means at his command, that while words and tones (means of 
representing nature surely less powerful than lines and colors) can 
kindle and purify the very inmost souls of men, the painter can 
only hope to entertain by his efforts at expression, and must remain 
forever brooding over his incommunicable thoughts? — Preface 2nd 
Edition. 

BEAUTY AND DIFPICULTY. 

5. It has been made part of our moral nature that we should have 
a pleasure in encountering and conquering opposition, for the sake 
of the struggle and the victory, not for the sake of any after re- 
sult ; and not only our own victory, but the perception of that of an- 
other, is in all cases the source of pure and ennobling pleasure. 
. . . It is far more difficult to be simple than to be complicated ; 
far more difficult to sacrifice skill and cease exertion in the proper 
place, than to expend both indiscriminately. We shall find, in the 
course of our investigation, that beauty and difficulty go together; 
and that they are only mean and paltry difficulties which it is 
wrong or contemptible to wrestle with. Be it remembered then — 
Power is never wasted. Whatever power has been employed, pro- 
duces excellence in proportion to its own dignity and exertion; 
and the faculty of perceiving this exertion, and appreciating this 
dignity, is the faculty of perceiving excellence. — Ideas of Power, 
Pt. I, ^Sec. 1, Ch. 3. 



RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN ART 79 

NO BEAUTY WITHOUT TRUTH. 

5. The moment ideas of truth are grouped together, so as to give 
rise to an idea of imitation, they change their very nature — lose their 
essence as ideas of truth — and are corrupted and degraded, so as to 
share in the treachery of what they have produced. Hence, finally, 
ideas of truth are the foundation, and ideas of imitation the de- 
struction, of all art. We shall be better able to appreciate their rela- 
tive dignity after the investigation Avhich we propose of the func- 
tions of the former ; but we may as well now express the conclusion 
to which we shall then be led — that no picture can be good which 
deceives by its imitation, for the very reason that nothing can be 
beautiful which is not true. — Ideas of Truth, Sec. 1, Ch. 5. 

THE FUNCTION OP BEAUTY. 

5. Ideas of beauty are among the noblest which can be presented 
the human mind, invariably exalting and purifying it according to 
their degree ; and it would appear that we are intended by the Deity 
to be constantly under their influence, because there is not one single 
object in nature which is not capable of conveying them, and which 
to the rightly perceiving mind, does not present an incalculably 
greater number of beautiful than of deformed parts ; there being in 
fact scarcely anything, in pure, undiseased nature, like positive de- 
formity, but only degrees of beauty, or such slight and rare points 
of permitted contrast as may render all around them more valuable 
by their opposition, spots of blackness in creation, to make its colors 
felt. 

IDEAS OF BEAUTY. 

6. Ideas of beauty are the subjects of moral, but not of intel- 
lectual perception. By the investigation of them we shall be led to 
the knowledge of the ideal subjects of art. 

The utmost glory of the human body is a mean subject of con- 
templation, compared to the emotion, exertion and character of that 
which animates it; the lustre of the limbs of the Aphrodite is faint 
beside that of the brow of the Madonna ; and the divine form of the 
Greek god, except as it is the incarnation and expression of divine 
mind, is degraded beside the passion and the prophecy of the vaults 
of the Sistine.— Pf. I, Sec. 1, Ch. 6. 

DANGER OF EASY POPULARITY. 

10. There is perhaps no greater stumbling-block in the artist's 
way, than the tendency to sacrifice truth and simplicity to decision 
and velocity, captivating qualities, easy of attainment, and sure to 
attract attention and praise, while the delicate degree of truth which 
is at first sacrificed to them is so totally unappreciable by the majority 
of spectators, so difficult of attainment to the artist, that it is no won- 



8o THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN. 

der that efforts so arduous and unrewarded should he abandoned. 
But if the temptation be once yielded to, its consequences are fatal ; 
there is no pause in the fall. . . . What was first neglect of nature, 
has become contradiction of her ; what was once imperfection, is now 
falsehood ; and all that was meritorious in his manner, is becoming 
the worst, because the most attractive of vices; decision without a 
foundation, and swiftness without an end. — Pt. I, Sec. 2, Ch, 2. 

THE SUBLIME IN DEATH. 

2. There are few things so great as death; -and there is perhaps 
nothing which banishes all littleness of thought and feeling in an 
equal degree with its contemplation. Everything, therefore, which 
in any way points to it, and, therefore, most dangers and powers over 
which we have little control, are in some degree sublime. But it is 
not the fear, observe, but the contemplation of death ; not the instinc- 
tive shudder and struggle of self-preservation, but the deliberate meas- 
urement of the doom, which are really great or sublime in feeling. 
It is not while we shrink, but while we defy, that we receive or convey 
the highest conceptions of the fate. There is no sublimity in the 
agony of terror. Whether do we trace it most in the cry to the 
mountains, "fall on us," and to the hills, "cover us," or in the calm- 
ness of the prophecy — "And though after my skin worms destroy 
this body, yet in my flesh I shall see God?" 

3. A little reflection will easily convince any one, that so far from 
the feelings of self-preservation being necessary to the sublime, their 
greatest action is totally destructive of it ; and that there are few feel- 
ings less capable of its perception than those of a coward. But the 
simple conception or idea of greatness of suffering or extent of de- 
struction is sublime, whether there be any connection of that idea 
with ourselves or not. If we were placed beyond the reach of all 
peril or pain, the perception of these agencies in their influence on 
others would not be less sublime, not because peril or pain are sub- 
lime in their own nature, but because their contemplation, exciting 
compassion or fortitude, elevates the mind, and renders meanness 
of thought impossible.— P^. 7. Sec. 2, Ch. 3. 

TRUTH ALWAYS ESSENTIAL. 

8. Nothing can atone for the want of truth, not the most brilliant 
imagination, the most playful fancy, the most pure feeling, (suppos- 
ing that feeling could be pure and false at the same time;) not the 
most exalted conception, nor the most comprehensive grasp of intel- 
lect, can make amends for the want of truth, and that for two reasons; 
first, because falsehood is in itself revolting and degrading ; and sec- 
ondly, because nature is so immeasurably superior to all that the 
human mind can conceive, that every departure from her is a fall 
beneath her, so that there can be no such thing as an ornamental 



RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN ART 8i 

falsehood. All falsehood must be a blot as well as a sin, an injury 
as well as a deception. 

We shall, in consequence, find that no artist can be graceful, im- 
aginative, or original, unless he be truthful ; and that the pursuit of 
beauty, instead of leading us away from truth, increases the desire 
for it and the necessity of it tenfold. — Pt. II, Sec. 1, Ch. 1. 

MORAL SENSIBILITY AND TRUTH. 

4. I believe this kind of sensibility may be entirely resolved into 
the acuteness of bodily sense associated with love, love I mean in its 
infinite and holy functions, as it embraces divine and human and 
brutal intelligences, and hallows the physical perception of external 
objects by association, gratitude, veneration, and other pure feelings 
of our moral nature. And although the discovery of truth is in it- 
self altogether intellectual, and dependent merely on our powers of 
physical perception and abstract intellect, wholly independent of our 
moral nature, yet these instruments (perception and judgment) are 
so sharpened and brightened, and so far more swiftly and effectively 
used, when they have the energy and passion of our moral nature 
to bring them into action — perception is so quickened by love, and 
judgment so tempered by veneration, that, practically, a man of 
deadened moral sensation is always dull in his perception of truth, 
and thousands of the highest and most divine truths of nature are 
wholly concealed from him, however constant and indefatigable may 
be his intellectual search. — Pt. II, Sec. 1, Ch. 2. 

VARIETY IN NATURE. 

7. The truths of nature are one eternal change — one infinite vari- 
ety. There is no bush on the face of the globe exactly like another 
bush ; — there are no two trees in the forest whose boughs bend into 
the same network, nor two leaves on the same tree which could not 
be told one from the other, nor two waves in the sea exactly alike. 
And out of this mass of various, yet agreeing beauty, it is by long 
attention only that the conception of the constant character — the 
ideal form — hinted at by all, yet assumed by none, is fixed upon the 
imagination for its standard of truth. — Pt. II, Sec. 1, Ch. 2. 

THE REAL PORTRAIT OF A MAN HIS SOUL. 

8. That which is truly and indeed characteristic of the man, is 
known only to God. One portrait of a man may possess exact accu- 
racy of feature, and no atom of expression ; it may be, to use the ordi- 
nary terms of admiration bestowed on such portraits by those whom 
they please, "as like as it can stare." Everybody, down to his cat, 
would know this. Another portrait may have neglected or misrep- 
resented the features, but may have given the flash of the eye, and 



82 THE RELIGION OF RUSK IN 

the peculiar radiance of the Up, seen on him only in his hours of 
highest mental excitement. None but his friends would know this. 
Another may have given none of his ordinary expressions, but one 
which he wore in the most excited instant of his life, when all his 
secret passions and all his highest powers were brought into play at 
once. None but those who had then seen him might recognize 
this as like. But which would be the most truthful portrait of the 
man? The first gives the accidents of body — the sport of climate, 
and food, and time — which corruption inhabits, and the worm waits 
for. The second gives the stamp of the soul upon the flesh ; but it is 
the soul seen in the emotions which it shares with many — which may 
not be characteristic of its essence — the results of habit, and educa- 
tion, and accident — a gloze, whether purposely worn or uncon- 
sciously assumed, perhaps totally contrary to all that is rooted and 
real in the mind that it conceals. The third has caught the trace of 
all that was most hidden and most mighty, when all hypocrisy, and 
all habit, and all petty and passing emotion — the ice, and the bank, 
and the foam of the immortal river — were shivered, and broken, and 
swallowed up in the awakening of its inward strength ; when the call 
and claim of some divine motive had brought into visible being 
those latent forces and feelings which the spirit's own volition could 
not summon, nor its consciousness comprehend; which God only 
knew, and God only could awaken, the depth and the mystery of its 
peculiar and separating attributes. And so it is with external 
Nature : she has a body and a soul like man ; but her soul is the 
Deity. It is possible to represent the body without the spirit ; and 
this shall be like to those whose senses are only cognizant of body. 
It is possible to represent the spirit in its ordinary and inferior mani- 
festations; and this shall be like to those who have not watched for 
its moments of power. It is possible to represent the spirit in its 
secret and high operations; and this shall be like only to those to 
whose watching they have been revealed. All these are truth; but 
according to the dignity of the truths he can represent or feel, is 
the power of the painter, — the justice of the judge. — Pt. II, Sec. 1, 
Ch. 2. 

THE PAINTER AND THE PREACHER. 

5. The teaching of nature is as varied and infinite as it is con- 
stant. As well might a preacher expect in one sermon to express and 
explain every divine truth Avhich can be gathered out of God's revela- 
tion, as a painter expect in one composition to express^ and illus- 
trate every lesson which can be received from God's creation. Both 
are commentators on infinity, and the duty of both is to take for 
each discourse one essential' truth, seeking particularly and insist- 
ing especially on those which are less palpable to ordinary 
observation, and more likely to escape an indolent research; and to 
impress that, and that alone, upon those whom they address, with 



RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN ART 83 

every illustration that can be furnished by their knowledge, and 
every adornment attainable by their power. — Pt. II, Sec. 1, Ch. 4- 

FAITHFULNESS TO TALENT. 

8. God appoints to every one of his creatures a separate mission, 
and if they discharge it honorably, if they quit themselves like men 
and faithfully follow that light which is in them, withdrawing from 
it all cold and quenching influence, there will assuredly come of it 
such burning as, in its appointed mode and measure, shall shine be- 
fore men, and be of service constant and holy. Degrees infinite of 
lustre there must always be, but the weakest among us has a gift, 
however seemingly trivial, which is peculiar to him, and which 
worthily used will be a gift also to his race forever — 

"Fool not," says George Herbert, 

"For all may have, 
If they dare choose, a glorious life or grave." 

If, on the contrary, there be nothing of this freshness achieved, if 
there be neither purpose nor fidelity in what is done, if it be an envi- 
ous or powerless imitation of other men's labors, if it be a display 
of mere manual dexterity or curious manufacture, or if in any other 
mode it show itself as having its origin in vanity, — Cast it out. It 
matters not what powers of mind may have been concerned or cor- 
rupted in it, all have lost their savor, it is worse than worthless; — 
perilous — Cast it out. — Pt. II, Sec. 1, Ch. If. 

THE SKIES CREATED FOR MAN. 

1. It is a strange thing how little in general people know about 
the sky. It is the part of creation in which nature has done more 
for the sake of pleasing man, more for the sole and evident purpose 
of talking to him and teaching him, than in any other of her works, 
and it is just the part in which we least attend to her. . . . There is 
not a moment of any day of our lives, when nature is not producing 
scene after scene, picture after picture, glory after glory, and work- 
ing still upon such exquisite and constant principles of the most 
perfect beauty, that it is quite certain it is all done for us, and intend- 
ed for our perpetual pleasure. And every man, wherever placed, 
however far from other sources of interest or of beauty, has this doing 
for him constantly. ^ The noblest scenes of the earth can be seen and 
known but by few; it is not intended that man should live always in 
the midst of them, he injures them by his presence, he ceases to feel 
them if he be always with them ; but the sky is for all ; bright as it 
is, it is not "too bright, nor good, for human nature's daily food;" 
it is fitted in all its functions for the perpetual comfort and exalting 
of the heart, for the soothing it and purifying it from its dross and 
dust. Sometimes gentle, sometimes capricious, sometimes awful, 
never the same for two moments together ; almost human in its pas- 



84 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

sions, almost spiritual in its tenderness, almost divine in its infinity^ 
its appeal to what is immortal in us, is as distinct, as its ministry of 
chastisement or of blessing to what is mortal is essential. — Pt. II, 
Sec. 3, Ch. 1. 

LOOKING THROUGH THE SKY. 

1. The sky is thought of as a clear, high material dome, the 
clouds as separate bodies, suspended beneath it, and in consequence, 
however delicate and exquisitely removed in tone their skies may be 
you always look at them, not through them. Now, if there be one 
characteristic of the sky more valuable or necessary to be rendered 
than another, it is that which Wordsworth has given in the second 
book of the Excursion : — 

"The chasm of sky above my head 
Is Heaven's profoundest azure. No domain 
For fickle, short-lived clouds, to occupy. 
Or to pass through ; — but rather an ahyss 
In. which the everlasting stars abide. 
And whose soft gloom and boundless depth, might tempt 
The curious eye to look for them by day." 

And, in his American Notes, I remember Dickens notices the same 
truth, describing himself as lying drowsily on the barge deck, look- 
ing not at, but through the sky. — Pt. II, Sec. 3, Ch. 1. 

turner's "sunrise ON THE ALPS."" 

88. Wait yet for one hour, until the east again becomes purple 
and the heaving mountains, rolling against it in darkness, like waves 
of a wild sea, are drowned one by one in the glory of its burning; 
watch the white glaciers blaze in their winding paths about the 
mountains, like mighty serpents Avith scales of fire ; watch the colum- 
nar peaks of solitary snow, kindling downwards, chasm by chasm, 
each in itself a new morning; their long avalanches cast down in 
keen streams brighter than the lightning, sending each his tribute 
of driven snow, like altarsmoke, up to the heaven ; the rose-light of 
their silent domes flushing that heaven about them and above them,, 
piercing with purer light through its purple lines of lifted cloud, 
casting a new glory on every wreath as it passas by, until the whole 
heaven — one scarlet canopy, — is interwoven with a roof of waving 
flame, and tossing, vault beyond vault, as with the drifted wings of 
many companies of angels ; and then, when you can look no more for 
gladness, and when you are bowed down with fear and love of the 
Maker and Doer of this, tell me who has best delivered this His mes- 
sage unto men ! — Pt. II, Sec. 3, Ch. 1. 

THE SPIRIT OF THE MOUNTAINS. 

3. Mountains are, to the rest of the body of the earth, what vio- 
lent muscular action is to the body of man. The muscles and ten- 



RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN ART 85 

dons of its anatomy are, in the mountain, brought out with fierce 
and convulsive energy, full of expression, passion, and strength ; the 
plains and the lower hills are the repose and the effortless motion of 
the frame, when its muscles lie dormant and concealed beneath the 
lines of its beauty, yet ruling those lines in their every undulation. 
This, then, is the first grand principle of the truth of the earth. 
The spirit of the hills is action ; that of the lowlands, repose ; and be- 
tween these there is to be found every variety of motion and of rest ; 
from the inactive plain, sleeping like the firmament, with cities for 
stars, to the fiery peaks, which, with heaving bosoms and exulting 
limbs, with the clouds drifting like hair from their bright foreheads, 
lift up their Titan hands to Heaven, saying, "I live forever!" 

MOUNTAINS AND MEN. 

4. But there is this difference between the action of the earth, 
and that of a living creature, that while the exerted limb marks its 
bones and tendons through the flesh, the excited earth casts off the 
flesh altogether, and its bones come out from beneath. Mountains 
are the bones of the earth, their highest peaks are invariably those 
parts of its anatomy which in the plains lie buried under five and 
twenty thousand feet of solid thickness of superincumbent soil, and 
vrhich spring up in the mountain ranges in vast pyramids or wedge^s 
flinging their garment of earth away from them on each side. The 
masses of the lower hills are laid over and against their sides, like the 
masses of lateral masonry against the skeleton arch of an unfinished 
bridge, except that they slope up to and lean against the central ridge : 
and finally, upon the slopes of these lower hills are strewed the level 
beds of sprinkled gravel, sand, and clay, which form the extent of 
the champaign. Here then is another grand principle of the tnith 
of earth, that the mountains must come from under all, and be the 
support of all ; and that everything also must be laid in their arms, 
heap above heap, the plains being the uppermost. Opposed to this 
truth is every appearance of the hills being laid upon the plains or 
built upon them. Nor is this a truth only of the earth on a large 
scale, for every minor rock (in position) comes out from the soil 
about it as an island out of the sea, lifting the earth near it like waves 
beating on its sides. — Pt. II, Sec. 4-, Gh. 1. 

GOD DEMANDS GREAT THINGS OF GREAT MINDS. 

15. The man who, in the most conspicuous part of his fore^ 
ground, will violate truth with every stroke of the pencil, is not like- 
ly to be more careful in other parts of it. . . . To handle 
the brush freely, and to paint grass and weeds with accuracy enough 
to satisfy the eye, are accomplishments which a year or two's practice 
will give any man ; but to trace among the grass and weeds those mys- 
teries of invention and combination, by which nature appeals to the 



86 TEE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

intellect^ — to render the delicate fissure, and descending curve, and 
undulating shadow of the mouldering soil, with gentle and fine fin- 
ger, like the touch of rain itself — to find even in all that appears 
most trifling or contemptible, fresh evidence of the constant working 
of the Divine power "for glory and for beauty," and to teach it and 
proclaim it to the unthinking and the unregardless — this, as it is the 
peculiar province and faculty of the master-mind, so it is the peculiar 
duty which is demanded of it by the Deity. — Pt. II, Sec. 4, Gh. 4- 

GREAT MINDS MAKE SMALL THINGS GREAT. 

28-30. Greatness of mind is not shown by admitting small 
things, but by making small things great under its influence. He 
who can take no interest in what is small, will take false interest in 
what is great; he who cannot make a bank sublime, will make a 
mountain ridiculous. . . 

One lesson, however, we are invariably taught by all, however 
approached or viewed — that the work of the Great Spirit of nature 
is as deep and unapproachable in the lowest as in the noblest ob- 
jects — that the Divine mind is as visible in its full energy of opera- 
tion on every lowly bank and mouldering stone, as in the lifting 
of the pillars of heaven, and settling the foundation of the earth ; and 
that to the rightly perceiving mind, there is the same infinity, the 
same majesty, the same power, the same unity, and the same perfec- 
tion, manifest in the casting of the clay as in the scattering of the 
cloud, in the mouldering of the dust as in the kindling of the day- 
star.— Pi. II, Sec. 4, Ch. 4. 

turner's MESSAGE OF DIVINE TRUTH. 

8. From the beginning to the present height of his career, he has 
never sacrificed a greater truth to a less. As he advanced, the pre- 
vious knowledge or attainment was absorbed in what succeeded, or 
abandoned only if incompatible, and never abandoned without a. 
gain; and his present works present the sum and perfection of his 
accumulated knowledge, delivered with the impatience and passion of 
one who feels too much, and knows too much, and has too little time 
to say it in, to pause for expression, or ponder over his syllables. 
There is in them the obscurity, but the truth, of prophecy; the in- 
stinctive and burning language, which would express less if ^ it 
uttered more, which is indistinct only by its fulness, and dark with 
its abundant meaning. He feels now, with long-trained vividness 
and keenness of sense, too bitterly the impotence of the hand, and the 
vainness of the color to catch one shadow or one image of the glory 
which God has revealed to him. He has dwelt and communed with 
nature all the days of his life ; he knows her now too well, he cannot 
palter over the material littleness of her outward form ; he must give 
her soul, or he has done nothing, and he cannot do this with the flax, 



RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN ART 87 

and the earth, and the oil. "I cannot gather the sunbeams out of the 
east, or I would make them tell you what I have seen ; but read this, 
and interpret this, and let us remember together. I cannot gather 
the gloom out of the night sky, or I would make that teach you what 
I have seen ; but read this, and interpret this, and let us feel together. 
And if you have not that within you which I can summon to my aid, 
if you have not the sun in your spirit, and the passion in your heart, 
which my words may awaken, though they be indistinct and swift, 
leave me ; for I will give you no patient mockery, no laborious insult 
of that glorious nature, whose I am and whom I serve. Let other 
servants imitate the voice and the gesture of their master, while they 
forget his message. Hear that message from me; but remember, 
that the teaching of Divine truth must still be a mystery." — PL II, 
Sec. 6, Ch. 2. 

THE FINGER OF GOD IN NATURE: — TO YOUNG ARTISTS. 

20-21. Their duty is neither to choose, nor compose, nor imagine, 
nor experimentalize: but to be humble and earnest in following the 
steps of nature, and tracing the finger of God. Nothing is so bad a 
symptom, in the work of young artists, as too much dexterity of 
handling ; for it is a sign that they are satisfied with their work, and 
have tried to do nothing more than they were able to do. Their 
work should be full of failures; for these are the signs of efforts. 
They should keep to quiet colors — grays and browns; and, making 
the early works of Turner their example, as his latest are to be their 
object of emulation, should go to nature in all singleness of heart, 
and walk with her laboriously and trustingly, having no other 
thoughts but how best to penetrate her meaning, and remember her 
instruction, rejecting nothing, selecting nothing, and scorning 
nothing; believing all things to be right and good, and rejoicing al- 
ways in the truth. Then, when their memories are stored, and their 
imaginations fed, and their hands firm, let them take up the scarlet 
and the gold, give the reins to their fancy and show us what their 
heads are made of. We will follow them wherever they choose to 
lead; we will check at nothing; they are then our masters, and are fit 
to be so. They have placed themselves above our criticism, and we 
will listen to their words in all faith and humility; but not unless 
they themselves have before bowed, in the same submission, to a 
higher Authority and Master. — Ft. II, Sec. 6, Ch. 3. 



II 

MODERN PAINTERS. 
Vol. II. (1846.) 

Part III. Or Ideas of Beauty. 

Part III. Sect. 1. Of the Theoretic Faculty — 15 Chaps. 

Part III. Sect. 2. Op the Imagination — 5 Chaps. 

This is a continuance of Vol. I. It is of great value as a further 
study of certain principles in art, and it is, perhaps, of equal value 
to the art student and the religious teacher. In his preface to the 
third volume the author says: 

"The first and second volumes were written to check, as far as I 
could, the attacks upon Turner which prevented the public from 
honoring his genius, at the time when his power was greatest. The 
check was partially given, but too late; Turner was seized by pain- 
ful illness not long after the second volume appeared; his works, 
towards the close of the year 1845, showed a conclusive failure of 
power; and I saw that nothing remained for me to write, but his 
epitaph. . . . 

It is an idea too frequently entertained, by persons who are not 
much interested in art, that there are no laws of right or wrong con- 
cerning it; and that the best art is that which pleases most widely. 
Hence the constant allegation of "dogmatism" against any one who 
states unhesitatingly either preference or principle, respecting pic- 
tures. There are, however, laws of truth and right in painting, just 
as fixed as those of harmony in music, or of affinity in chemistry. 
Those laws are perfectly ascertainable by labor, and ascertainable 
no other way." 

An able English writer on the social aspects of Ruskin's work 
remarks that: "The religious tone of his art-treatment in 'Modem 
Painters' is not due to a general orthodox recognition of the divine 
supremacy in the order of the world, still less is it to be regarded 
as a literary expression of youthful piety. It is the first deliberate 
and philosophic statement of that doctrine of theocratic government 



RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN ART 89 

of nature and of human life, which remained a fixed principle 
in all his work. . . . There is indeed, a stern enthusiasm in his 
early statement of this creed, which bears the marks of his early 
Calvinist ancestry, and sometimes reminds us of that famous Scot- 
tish document, the Shorter Catechism. . . . The theology of the 
second volume of 'Modern Painters' is one among many indica- 
tions of a ripening moral and religious fervour at this period of 
his life. The theology of Barrow and Hooker, the glowing piety 
of George Herbert, laid hold of his mind and spirit, . . . and a 
period of intense devotion . . . fastened upon him an abiding 
sense of the truth that moral character is the root of art."* 

The selections which follow include some of those lofty and 
powerful descriptions of masterpieces of religious art, which sug- 
gests the question, — which is greater : — the oil painting of the artist 
— Turner, or the word painting of Ruskin? 

WITNESSES FOR GOD. 

4. Man's use and function (and let him who will not grant me 
this follow me no farther; for this I propose always to assume) is 
to be the witness of the glory of God, and to advance that glory by 
his reasonable obedience and resultant happiness. Whatever en- 
ables us to fulfil this function, is in the pure and first sense of the 
word useful to us. Pre-eminently, therefore, whatever sets the glory 
of God more brightly before us. But things that only help us to 
exist, are in a secondary and mean sense, useful, or rather, if they 
be looked for alone, they are useless and worse, for it would be 
better that we should not exist, than that we should guiltily disap- 
point the purposes of existence. — Pt. Ill, Sec. 1, Ch. 1. 

NATIONS FORGET GOD IN THE MIDST OF PLENTY. 

7. Deep though the causes of thankfulness must be to every 
people at peace with others and at unity in itself, there are causes 
of fear also, a fear greater than of sword and sedition ; that depend- 
ence on God may Ibe forgotten because the bread is given and the 
water is sure, that gratitude to him may cease because his con- 
stancy of protection has taken the semblance of a natural law, that 
heavenly hope may grow faint amidst the full fruition of the world, 
that selfishness may take place of undemanded devotion, cornpassion 
be lost in vain-glory, and love in dissimulation," that enervation rnay 
succeed to strength, apathy to patience, and the noise of jesting 

1 "John Ruskin, Social Reformer,''^ J. A. Hobson. 

2 Rom. xii. 9. 



go THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

words and foulness of dark thoughts, to the earnest purity of the 
girded loins and the burning lamp. About the river of human 
life there is a wintry wind, though a heavenly sunshine; the iris 
colors its agitation, the frost fixes upon its repose. Let us beware that 
our rest become not the rest of stones, which so long as they are 
torrent-tossed and thunder-stricken, maintain their majesty, but when 
the stream is silent, and the storm passed, suffer the grass to cover 
them and the lichen to feed on them, and are ploughed down into 
dust. 

THE SALT OF NATIONS. 

1. And though I believe that we have salt enough of ardent and 
holy mind amongst us to keep us in some measure from this moral 
decay, yet the signs of it must be watched with anxiety, in all mat- 
ter however trivial, in all directions however distant. And at this 
time, when the iron roads are tearing up the surface of Europe, as 
grape-shot do the sea, when their great sagene is drawing and twitch- 
ing the ancient frame and strength of England together, contract- 
ing all its various life, its rocky arms and rural heart, into a nar- 
row, finite, calculating metropolis of manufactures, when there is 
not a monument throughout the cities of Europe, that speaks of old 
years and mighty people, but it is being swept away to build cafes 
and gaming-houses; when the honor of God is thought to consist 
in the poverty of His temple, and the column is shortened, and the 
pinnacle shattered, the color denied to the casement, and the marble 
to the altar, while exchequers are exhausted in luxury of boudoirs, 
and pride of reception-rooms; when we ravage without a pause all 
the loveliness of creation which God in giving pronounced good, and 
destroy without a thought all those labors which men have given 
their lives, and their sons' sons' lives to complete, and have left for 
a legacy to all their kind, a legacy of more than their hearts' blood, 
for it is of their souls' travail, there is need, bitter need, to bring 
back, if we may, into men's minds, that to live is nothing, unless to 
live be to know Him by whom we live, and that he is not to be 
known by marring his fair works, and blotting out the evidence 
of his influences upon his creatures, not amid the hurry of crowds 
and crash of innovation, but in solitary places, and out of the glow- 
ing intelligences which he gave to men of old. He did not teach them 
how to build for glory and for beauty, he did not give them the 
fearless, faithful, inherited energies that worked on and down from 
death to death, generation after generation, that we, foul and sen- 
sual as we are, might give the carved work of their poured-out spirit 
to the axe and the hammer; . . . nor clothed the grass only for 
the oven.— Pi. Ill, Sec. 1, Ch. 1. 



RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN ART 91 

THE HIGHER MINISTRY OF SCIENCE. 

8. The common consent of men proves and accepts the propo- 
sition, that whatever part of any pursuit ministers to the bodily com- 
forts, and admits of material uses, is ignoble, and whatsoever part 
is addressed to the mind only, is noble ; and that geology does better 
in reclothing dry bones and revealing lost creations, than in tracing 
veins of lead and beds of iron; astronomy better in opening to us 
the houses of heaven than in teaching navigation; botany better 
in displaying structure than in expressing juices; surgery better in 
investigating organization than in setting limbs ; only it is ordained 
that, for our encouragement, every step we make in the more exalted 
range of science adds something also to its practical applicabilities; 
that all the great phenomena of nature, the knowledge of which is 
desired by the angels only, by us partly, as it reveals to farther vision 
the being and the glory of Him in whom they rejoice and we live, 
dispense yet such kind influences and so much of material blessing 
as to be joyfully felt by all inferior creatures, and to be desired by 
them with such single desire as the imperfection of their nature 
may admit; that the strong torrents which, in their own gladness 
fill the hills with hollow thunder and the vales with winding light, 
have yet their bounden charge of field to feed and barge to bear; 
that the fierce flames to which the Alp owes its upheaval and the 
volcano its terror, temper for us the metal vein and quickening 
spring; and that for our incitement, I say not our reward, for knowl- 
edge is its own reward, herbs have their healing, stones their pre- 
ciousness, and stars their times. — Pt. Ill, Sec. 1, Ch. 1. 

THE DIVINE IN EVERY HUMAN ATTRIBUTE. 

6. In whatever is an object of life, in whatever may be infinitely 
and for itself desired, we may be sure there is something of divine, 
for God will not make anything an object of life to his creatures 
which does not point to, or partake of. Himself. And so, though 
we were to regard the pleasures of sight merely as the highest of 
sensual pleasures, and though they were of rare occurrence, and, 
when occurring, isolated and imperfect, there would still be a super- 
natural character about them, owing to their permanence and self- 
sufficiency, where no other sensual pleasures are permanent or self- 
sufficient. But when, instead of being scattered, interrupted, or 
chance-distributed, they are gathered together, and so arranged to 
enhance each other as by chance they could not be, there is caused 
by them not only a feeling of strong affection towards the object 
in which they exist, but a perception of purpose and adaptation of it 
to our desires; a perception, therefore, of the immediate operation 
of the Intelligence which so formed us, and so feeds us. 

Out of which perception arise joy, admiration, and gratitude. 

Now the mere animal consciousness of the pleasantness I call 



92 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

sesthesis; but the exulting, reverent, and grateful perception of it 
I call theoria. For this, and this only, is the full comprehension and 
contemplation of the beautiful as a gift of God, a gift not necessary 
to our being, but added to, and elevating it, and twofold, first of 
the desire, and secondly of the thing desired. 

ILLUSTRATIONS PROM THE BIBLE. 

7. And that this joyfulness and reverence are a necessary part of 
theoretic pleasure is very evident when we consider that, by the pres- 
ence of these feelings, even the lower and more sensual pleasures may 
be rendered theoretic 

All things may be elevated by affection, as the spikenard of Mary, 
and in the Song of Solomon, the myrrh upon the handles of the 
lock, and that of Isaac concerning his son. And the general law for 
all these pleasures is, that when sought in the abstract and ardently, 
they are foul things, but when received with thankfulness and with 
reference to God's glory, they become theoretic; and so I can find 
something divine in the sweetness of wild fruits, as well as in the 
pleasantness of the pure air, and the tenderness of its natural per- 
fumes that come and go as they list. — Pt. Ill, Sec. 1, Ch. 2. 

THE SENSE OF BEAUTY CENTERED IN THE HEART. 

8. As it is necessary to the existence of an idea of beauty, that 
the sensual pleasure which may be its basis, should be accompanied 
first with joy, then with love of the object, then with the perception 
of kindness in a superior Intelligence, finally with thankfulness and 
veneration towards that Intelligence itself, and as no idea can be at 
all considered as in any way an idea of beauty, until it be made up 
of these emotions, any more than we can be said to have an idea of 
a letter of which we perceive the perfume and the fair writing, 
without understanding the contents of it, or intent of it ; and as these 
emotions are in no way resultant from, nor obtainable by, any opera- 
tion of the intellect, it is evident that the sensation of beauty is 
not sensual on the one hand, nor is it intellectual on the other, but 
is dependent on a pure, right, and open state of the heart, both for 
its truth and for its intensity, insomuch that even the right after- 
action of the intellect upon facts of beauty so apprehended, is de- 
pendent on the acuteness of the heart feeling about them ; and thus 
the Apostolic words come true, in this minor respect as in all others, 
that men are alienated from the life of God, through the ignorance 
that is in them, having the understanding darkened because of the 
hardness of their hearts, and so being past feeling, give themselves 
up to lasciviousness ; for we do indeed see constantly that men hav- 
ing naturally acute perceptions of the beautiful, yet not receiving 
it with a pure heart, nor into their hearts at all, never comprehend 
it, nor receive good from it, but make it a mere minister to their 



RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN ART 93 

desires, and accompaniment and seasoning of lower sensual pleas- 
ures, until all their emotions take the same earthly stamp, and the 
sense of beauty sinks into the servant of lust. — Pt. Ill, Sec. 1, Ch. 2. 

THE PURE IN HEART SEES GOD.. 

10. The Christian theoria seeks not, though it accepts, and 
touches with its own purity, what the Epicurean sought, but finds 
its food and the objects of its love everywhere, in what is harsh and 
fearful, as well as what is kind, nay, even in all that seems coarse 
and commonplace ; seizing that which is good, and delighting more 
sometimes at finding its table spread in strange places, and in the 
presence of its enemies, and its honey coming out of the rock, than 
if all were harmonized into a less wondrous pleasure, hating only 
what is self -sighted and insolent of men's work, despising all that 
is not of God, unless reminding it of God, yet able to find evidence 
of him still, where all seems forgetful of him, and to turn that into 
a witness of his working which was meant to obscure it, and so with 
clear and unoffended sight beholding him forever, according to 
the written promise, — Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall 
see God.— P^. Ill, Sec. 1, Ch. 2. 

POWER OP CHOICE. 

2. Though we can neither at once choose whether we shall see 
lan object, red, green, or blue, nor determine to like the red better 
than the blue, or the blue better than the red, yet we 
can, if we choose, make ourselves ultimately susceptible of such 
impressions in other degrees, and capable of pleasures in them in 
different measure; and because, wherever power of any kind is 
given, there is responsibility attached, it is the duty of men to 
prefer certain impressions of sense to others, because they have the 
power of doing so, this being precisely analogous to the law of the 
moral world, whereby men are supposed not only capable of gov- 
erning their likes and dislikes, but the whole culpability or pro- 
priety of actions is dependent upon this capability, so that men are 
guilty or otherwise, not for what they do, but for what they desire, 
the command being not, thou shalt obey, but thou shalt love, the 
Lord thy God, -which, if men were not capable of governing and 
directing their affections, would be the command of an impossi- 
bility.— P^. Ill, Sec. 1, Ch. 3. 

PATIENCE AND MORAL TASTE. 

10. The temper by which right taste is formed is, first, patient. 
It dwells upon what is submitted to it, it does not trample^ upon 
it lest it should be pearls, even though it look like husks, it is a 
good ground, soft, penetrable, retentive, it does not send up thorns 



94 THE RELIGION OF RUSK IN 

of unkind thoughts, to choke the weak seed, it is hungry and thirsty 
too, and drinks all the dew that falls on it, it is an honest and 
good heart, that shows no too ready springing before the sun be 
up, but fails not afterwards; it is distrustful of itself, so as to be 
ready to believe and to try all things, and yet so trustful of itself, 
that it will neither quit what it has tried, nor take anything with- 
out trying. And that pleasure which it has in things that it finds 
true and good, is so great that it cannot possibly be led aside by 
any tricks of fashion, nor diseases of vanity, it cannot be cramped 
in its conclusions by partialities and hypocrisies, its visions and its 
delights are too penetrating, too living, for any whitewashed object 
or shallow fountain long to endure or supply. It clasps all that it 
loves so hard, that it crushes it if it be hollow. 

11. Now, the conclusions of this disposition are sure to be even- 
tually right, more and more right according to the general maturity 
of all the powers, but it is sure to come right at last, because its 
operation is in analogy to, and in harmony with, the whole spirit 
of the Christian moral system, and that which it will ultimately 
love and rest in, are great sources of happiness common to all the 
human race, and based on the relations they hold to their Creator. 
—Pi. Ill, Sec. 1, Oh. 3. 

TRUE AND FALSE TASTES. 

12. If we can perceive beauty in everything of God's doing, we may 
argue that we have reached the true perception of its universal laws. 
Hence, false taste may be known by its fastidiousness, by its de- 
mands of pomp, splendor, and unusual combination, by its enjoy- 
ment only of particular styles and modes of things, and by its pride 
also, for it is forever meddling, mending, accumulating, and self- 
exulting, its eye is always upon itself, and it tests all things around 
it by the way they fit it. But true taste is forever growing, learning, 
reading, worshipping, laying its hand upon its mouth because it is 
astonished, casting its shoes from off its feet because it finds all 
ground holv, lamenting over itself and testing itself by the way 
that it fits things.— Pi. Ill, Sec. 1, Ch. 3. 

HIGHEST PLEASURES ONLY THROUGH DIFFICULTIES. 

14. Had it been ordained by the Almighty that the highest 
pleasures of sight should be those of most difficult attainment and 
that to arrive at them it should be necessary to accumulate gilded 
palaces tower over tower, and pile artificial mountains around in- 
sinuated lakes, there would have been a direct contradiction between 
the unselfish duties and inherent desires of every individual. But 
no such contradiction exists in the system of Divine Providence, 
which, leaving it open to us, if we will, as creatures in probation, 
to abuse this sense like every other, and pamper it with selfish and 



RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN ART 95 

thoughtless vanities as we pamper the palate with deadly meats, 
until the appetite of tasteful cruelty is lost in its sickened satiety, 
incapable of pleasure unless, Caligula like, it concentrate the labor 
of a million of lives into the sensation of an hour, leaves it also 
open to us, by humble and loving ways, to make ourselves sus- 
ceptible of deep delight from the meanest objects of creation, and 
of a delight which shall not separate us from our fellows, nor re- 
quire the sacrifice of any duty or occupation, but which shall bind 
us closer to men and to God, and be with us always, harmonized 
with every action, consistent with every claim, unchanging and 
eternal.— P^. Ill, Sec. 1, Ch. 3. 

PROGRESS IN PURITY OUR TRUEST PLEASURE. 

12. Between youth and age there will be found differences of 
seeking, which are not wrong, nor of false choice in either, but of 
different temperament, the youth sympathizing more with the glad- 
ness, fulness, and magnificence of things, and the gray hairs with 
their completion, sufficiency, and repose. And so, neither condemn- 
ing the delights of others, nor altogether distrustful of our own, 
we must advance, as we live on, from what is brilliant to what is 
pure, and from what is promised to what is fulfilled, and from 
what is our strength to what is our crown, only obser\dng in all 
things how that which is indeed wrong, and to be cut up from tho 
root, is dislike, and not affection. For by the very nature of these 
beautiful qualities, which I have defined to be the signature of 
God upon his works, it is evident that in whatever we altogether 
dislike, we see not all; that the keenness of our vision is to be 
tested by the expansiveness of our love, and that as far as the influ- 
ence of association has voice in the question, though it is indeed 
possible that the inevitable painfulness of an object, for which we 
can render no sufficient reason, may be owing to its recalling of a 
sorrow, it is more probably dependent on its accusation of a crime. 
—Pt, III, Sec. 1, Ch. 4. 

INFINITY OF SPACE. 

5. There is one thing . . . which no other object of sight 
suggests in equal degree, and that is, — Infinity. It is of all visible 
things the least material, the least finite, the farthest withdrawn 
from the earth prison-house, the most typical of the nature of God, 
the most suggestive of the glory of His dwelling-place. For the 
sky of night, though we may know it boundless, is dark, it is a 
studded vault, a roof that seems to shut us in and down, but the 
bright distance has no limit, we feel its infinity, as we rejoice in 
its purity of light.— Pi. Ill, Sec. 1, Ch. 5. 



96 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

INFINITY OP GOD. 

19. Farther expressions of infinity there are in the mystery of 
nature, and in some measure in her vastness, but these are depend- 
ent on our own imperfections, and therefore, though they produce 
sublimity, they are unconnected with beauty. For that which we 
foolishly call vastness is, rightly considered, not more wonderful, 
not more impressive, than that which we insolently call littleness, 
and the infinity of God is not mysterious, it is only unfathomable, 
not concealed, but incomprehensible : it is a clear infinity, the dark- 
ness of the pure unsearchable sea. — Pt. Ill, Sec. 1, Ch. 5. 



UNITY AND COMPREHENSIVENESS OF GOD. 

1. That Unity which consists not in his own singleness or separa- 
tion, but in the necessity of his inherence in all things that be, with- 
out which no creature of any kind could hold existence for a mo- 
ment. Which necessity of Divine essence I think it better to speak of 
as comprehensiveness, than as unity, because unity is often under- 
stood in the sense of oneness or singleness, instead of universality, 
whereas the only Unity which by any means can become grateful 
or an object of hope to men, and whose types therefore in mate- 
rial things can be beautiful, is that on which turned the last words 
and prayer of Christ before his crossing of the Kidron brook. 
"Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall be- 
lieve on me through their word. That they all may be one, as thou. 
Father, art in me, and I in thee." — Pt. Ill, Sec. 1, Ch. 6. 

STRENGTH AND UNITY IN ALL THINGS. 

2. There is not any matter, nor any spirit, nor any creature, 
but it is capable of an unity of some kind with other creatures, 
and in that unity is its perfection and theirs, and a pleasure also 
for the beholding of all other creatures that can behold. So the 
unity of spirits is partly in their sympathy, and partly in their 
giving and taking, and always in their love; and these are their 
delight and their strength, for their strength is in their co-work- 
ing and army fellowship, and their delight is in the giving and 
receiving of alternate and perpetual currents of good, their insep- 
arable dependency on each other's being, and their essential and 
perfect depending on their Creator's: and so the unity of earthly 
creatures is their power and their peace, not like the dead and cold 
peace of undisturbed stones and solitary mountains, but the living 
peace of trust, and the living power of support, of hands that hold 
each other and are still : and so the unity of matter is, in its noblest 
form, the organization of it which builds it up into temples for 
the spirit, and in its lower form, the sweet and strange affinity, which 
gives to it the glory of its orderly elements, and the fair variety 



RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN ART ^7 

of change and assimilation that turns the dust into the crystal, and 
separates the waters that be above the firmament from the waters that 
be beneath, and in its lowest form; it is the working and walking 
and clinging together that gives their power to the winds, and its 
syllables and soundings to the air, and their weight to the waves, 
and their burning to the sunbeams, and their stability to the moun- 
tains, and to every creature whatsoever operation is for its glory 
and for others' good.— P^. ///, Sec, 1, Ch. 6, 



SPIRITUAL UNITY. 

3. In spiritual creatures it is their own constant building up 
by true knowledge and continuous reasoning to higher perfection, 
and the singleness and straightforwardness of their tendencies to 
more complete communion with God. And there is the unity of 
membership, which we may call essential unity, which is the unity 
of things separately imperfect into a perfect whole, and this is the 
great unity of which other unities are but parts and means, it is in 
matter the harmony of sounds and consistency of bodies, and among 
spiritual creatures, their love and happiness and very life in God. — 
Pt. Ill, Sec. 1, Ch. 6. 



REST A SIGN AND A GIFT. 

1. As opposed to passion, change fulness, or laborious exer- 
tion, repose is the especial and separating characteristic of the eter- 
nal mind and power; it is the "I am" of the Creator opposed to 
the "I become" of all creatures; it is the sign alike of the supreme 
knowledge which is incapable of surprise, the supreme power which 
is incapable of labor, the supreme volition which is incapable of 
change; it is the stillness of the beams of the eternal chambers 
laid upon the variable waters of ministering creatures; and as we 
saw before that the infinity which was a type of the Divine nature 
on the one hand, became yet more desirable on the other from its 
peculiar address to our prison hopes, and to the expectations of an 
unsatisfied and unaccomplished existence, so the types of this third' 
attribute of the Deity might seem to have been rendered farther 
attractive to mortal instinct, through the infliction upon the fallen 
creature of a curse necessitating self having too much of change- 
fulness for his purpose, is spoken of as one "that heareth not the 
loud winds when they call, and moveth altogether, if it move at 
all." And again of children, which, that it may remove from them 
the child restlessness, the imagination conceives as rooted flowers 
"Beneath an old gray oak, as violets, lie." On the other hand, the 
scattered rocks, which have not, as such, vitality enough for rest, 
are gifted with it by the living image: they "lie couched around 
us like a flock of sheep."— P^. ///, Sec. 1, Ch. 7. 



98 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

SYMMETRY A TYPE OF DIVINE JUSTICE. 

1. The fourth constituent of beauty (symmetry). In all per- 
fectly beautiful objects, there is found the opposition of one part 
to another and a reciprocal balance obtained, . . . and even in 
the meanest things the rule holds, as in the kaleidoscope, wherein 
agreeableness is given to forms altogether accidental merely by their 
repetition and reciprocal opposition; which orderly balance and 
arrangement are essential to the perfect operation of the more ear- 
nest and solemn qualities of the beautiful, as being heavenly in 
their nature, and contrary to the violence and disorganization of 
sin, so that the seeking of them and submission to them is always 
marked in minds that have been subjected to high moral discipline. 
—Pt. Ill, Sec. 1, Ch. 8. 

PURITY AN ESSENCE OF LIGHT AND A TYPE OF THE DIVINE. 

1. It may at first appear strange that I have not in my enumera- 
tion of the types of Divine attributes, included that which is cer- 
tainly the most visible and evident of all, as well as the most dis- 
tinctly expressed in Scripture; God is light, and in Him is no 
darkness at all. But I could not logically class the presence of an 
actual substance or motion with mere conditions and modes of being, 
neither could I logically separate from any of these, that which is 
evidently necessary to the perception of all. And it is also to be 
observed that though the love of light is more instinctive in the 
human heart than any other of the desires connected with beauty, 
we can hardly separate its agreeableness in its own nature from 
the sense of its necessity and value for the purposes of life, neither 
the abstract painfulness of darkness from the sense of danger and 
incapacity connected with it; and note also that it is not all light, 
but light possessing the universal qualities of beauty, diffused or 
infinite rather than in points, tranquil, not startling and variable, 
pure, not sullied or oppressed, which is indeed pleasant and per- 
fectly typical of the Divine nature. — Pt. Ill, Sec. 1, Ch. 9. 

BEAUTY IN NATURE AN EXPRESSION OF THE DIVINE. 

2. The qualities of beauty are not to be considered as stamped 
upon matter for our teaching or enjoyment only, but as the nec- 
essary consequence of the perfection of God's working, and the in- 
evitable stamp of his image on what he creates. For it would be 
inconsistent with his Infinite perfection to work imperfectly in any 
place, or in any matter; wherefore we do not find that flowers and 
fair trees, and kindly skies, are given only where man may see 
them and be fed by them, but the Spirit of God works everywhere 
alike, where there is no eye to see, covering all lonely places with an 
equal glory, using the same pencil and outpouring the same splen- 
dor, in the caves of the waters where the sea-snakes swim, and in the 



RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN ART 99 

desert where the satyrs dance, among the fir-trees of the stork, and 
the rocks of the conies, as among those higher creatures whom he 
has made capable witnesses of his working. 

3. Nevertheless, I think that the admission of different degrees 
of this glory and image of himself upon creation, has the look of 
something meant especially for us; for although, in pursuance of the 
appointed system of government by universal laws, these same de- 
grees exist where we cannot witness them, yet the existence of de- 
grees at all seems at first unlikely in Divine work, and I cannot 
see reason for it unless that palpable one of increasing in us the 
understanding of the sacred characters by showing us the results of 
their comparative absence. — Pt. Ill, Sec. 1, Ch. 11. 

DEGREES OF PERFECTION FOR MAn's SAKE. 

4. The fact of our deriving constant pleasure from whatever is a 
type or semblance of Divine attributes, and from nothing but that 
which is so, is the most glorious of all that can be demonstrated of 
human nature; it not only sets a great gulf of specific separation 
between us and the lower animals, but it seems a promise of a 
communion ultimately deep, close, and conscious, with the Being 
whose darkened manifestations we here feebly and unthinkingly 
delight in. Probably to every order of intelligence more of his 
image becomes palpable in all around them, and the glorified spirits 
and the angels have perceptions as much more full and rapturous 
than ours, as ours than those of beasts and creeping things. And 
receiving it, as we must, for an universal axiom that "no natural 
desire can be entirely frustrate," and seeing that these desires are 
indeed so unfailing in us that they have escaped not the reasonera 
of any time, but were held divine of old, and in even heathen coun- 
tries, it cannot be but that there is in these visionary pleasures, 
lightly as we now regard them, cause for thankfulness, ground for 
hope, anchor for faith, more than in all the other manifold gifts 
and guidances, wherewith God crowns the years, and hedges the 
paths of men.— P^. Ill, Sec. 1, Ch. 11. 

LOVE AND VITAL BEAUTY. 

2. Its first perfection relating to vital beauty, is the kindness 
and unselfish fulness of heart, which receives the utmost amount 
of pleasure from the happiness of all things. Of which in high 
degree the heart of man is incapable, neither what intense enjoy- 
ment the angels may have in all that they see of things that move 
and live, and in the part they take in the shedding of God's kind- 
ness upon them, can we know or conceive : only in proportion as we 
draw near to God, and are made in measure like unto him, can 
we increase this our possession of charity, of which the entire es- 
sence is in God only. Wherefore it is evident that even the ordinary 



loo THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

exercise of this faculty implies a condition of the whole moral being^ 
in some measure right and healthy, and that to the entire exer- 
cise of it there is necessary the entire perfection of the Christian 
character, for he who loves not God, nor his brother, cannot love the 
grass beneath his feet and the creatures that fill those spaces in 
the universe which he needs not, and which live not for his uses; 
nay, he has seldom grace to be grateful even to those that love him 
and serve him, while, on the other hand, none can love God nor his 
human brother without loving all things which his Father loves, 
nor without looking upon them every one as in that respect his 
brethren also, and perhaps worthier than he, if in the under con- 
cords they have to fill, their part is touched more truly. — Pt. Ill, 
Sec. 1, Ch. m. 

god's providence in all organic nature. 

8. There is not any organic creature, but in its history and habits 
it shall exemplify or illustrate to us some moral excellence or defi- 
ciency or some point of God's providential government, which it is 
necessary for us to know. Thus the functions and the fates of ani- 
mals are distributed to them, with a variety wjiich exhibits io 
us the dignity and results of almost every passion and kind of con- 
duct, some filthy and slothful, pining and unhappy ; some rapacious, 
restless, and cruel; some ever earnest and laborious, and, I think, 
unhappy in their endless labor, creatures, like the bee, that heap 
up riches and cannot tell who shall gather them, and others em- 
ployed like angels in endless offices of love and praise. Of which! 
when, in right condition of mind, we esteem those most beautiful, 
whose functions are the most noble, whether as some, in mere en- 
ergy, or as others, in moral honor, so that we look with hate on the 
foulness of the sloth, and the subtlety of the adder, and the rage 
of the hyena: with the honor due to their earthly wisdom we invest 
the earnest ant and unwearied bee; but we look with full percep- 
tion of sacred function to the tribes of burning plumage and choral 
voice. And so what lesson we might receive for our earthly con- 
duct from the creeping and laborious things, was taught us by that 
earthly king who made silver to be in Jerusalem as stones (yet 
thereafter was less rich towards God). But from the lips of an 
heavenly King,' who had not where to lay his head, we were taught 
what lesson we have to learn from those higher creatures who sow 
not, nor reap, nor gather into barns, for their Heavenly Father 
feedeth them.— P^. Ill, Sec. 1, Ch. 12. 

moral judgment the standard of beauty. 

12. Looking to the whole kingdom of organic nature, we find 
that our full receiving of its beauty depends first on the sensibility 
and then on the accuracy and touchstone faithfulness of the heart 



RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN ART loi 

in its moral judgments, so that it is necessary that we should not 
only love all creatures well, but esteem them in that order which 
is according to God's laws and not according to our own human 
passions and predilections, not looking for swiftness, and strength, 
and cunning, rather than for patience and kindness, still less de- 
lighting in their animosity and cruelty one towards another . . . 
so that in all cases we are to beware of such opinions as seem in any 
way referable to human pride, or even to the grateful or pernicious 
influence of things upon ourselves, and to cast the mind free, and 
out of ourselves, humbly, and yet always in that noble position of 
pause above the other visible creatures, nearer God than they, which 
we authoritatively hold, thence looking down upon them, and test- 
ing the clearness of our moral vision by the extent, and fulness, 
and constancy of our pleasure in the light of God's love as it em- 
braces them, and the harmony of his holy laws, that forever bring 
mercy out of rapine, and religion out of wrath. — Pt. Ill, Sec. 1, 
Ch. 12. 

EVERY CEEATURE OF GOD IS GOOD. 

1. In the first or sympathetic operation of the theoretic faculty, 
it will be remembered, we receive pleasure from the signs of mere 
happiness in living things. In the second theoretic operation of 
comparing and judging, we constituted ourselves such judges of the 
lower creatures as Adam was made by God when they were brought 
to him to be named, and we allowed of beauty in them as they 
reached, more or less, to that standard of moral perfection by which 
we test ourselves. But, in the third place, we are to come down 
again from the judgment seat, and taking it for granted that every 
creature of God is in some way good, and has a duty and specific 
operation providentially accessory to the well-being of all, we are 
to look in this faith to that employment and nature of each, and 
to derive pleasure from their entire perfection and fitness for the 
duty they have to do, and in their entire fulfilment of it: and so 
we are to take pleasure and find beauty in the magnificent bind- 
ing together of the jaws of the ichthyosaurus for catching and hold- 
ing, and in the adaptation of the lion for springing, and of the 
locust for destroying, and of the lark for singing, and in every 
creature for the doing of that which God has made it to do. Which 
faithful pleasure in the perception of the perfect operation of lower 
creatures I have placed last among the perfections of the theoretic 
faculty concerning them, because it is commonly last acquired, both 
owing to the humbleness and trustfulness of heart which it de- 
mands, and because it implies a knowledge of the habits and struc- 
ture of every creature, such as we can but imperfectly possess. — 
Pt 111, Sec. 1, Ch. 13. 



102 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

MORAL DIVERSITY OF MANKIND. 

1. Having passed gradually through all the orders and fields 
of creation, and traversed that goodly line of God's happy creatures 
who "leap not, but express a feast, where all the guests sit close, 
and nothing wants," without finding any deficiency which human 
invention might supply, nor any harm which human interference 
might mend, we come at last to set ourselves face to face with our- 
selves, expecting that in creatures made after the image of God we 
are to find comeliness and completion more exquisite than in the 
fowls of the air and the things that pass through the paths of the 
Bea. But behold a sudden change from all former experience. No 
longer among the individuals of the race is there equality or likeness, 
a distributed fairness and fixed type visible in each, but evil diver- 
sity, and terrible stamp of various degradation ; features seamed with 
sickness, dimmed by sensuality, convulsed by passion, pinched by 
poverty, shadowed by sorrow, branded with remorse; bodies con- 
sumed with sloth, broken down by labor, tortured by disease, dis- 
honored in foul uses; intellects without power, hearts without hope, 
minds earthly and devilish ; our bones full of the sin of our youth, 
the heaven revealing our iniquity, the earth rising up against us, 
the roots dried up beneath, and the branch cut off above ; well for us 
only, if, after beholding this our natural face in a glass, we desire 
not straightway to forget what manner of men we be. — Pt. Ill, Sec. 
1, Ch. U. 

LOVE AND FAITH ABOVE REASON. 

5. The operation of the right moral feelings on the intellect 
is always for the good of the latter, for it is not possible that selfish- 
ness should reason rightly in any respect, but must be blind in its 
estimation of the worthiness of all things, neither anger, for that 
overpowers the reason or outcries it, neither sensuality, for that 
overgrows and chokes it, neither agitation, for that has no time to 
compare things together, neither enmity, for that must be unjust, 
neither fear, for that exaggerates all things, neither cunning and 
deceit, for that which is voluntarily untrue will soon be unwit- 
tingly so: but the great reasoners are self-command, and trust un- 
agitated, and deep-looking Love, and Faith, which as she is above 
Reason, so she best holds the reins of it from her high seat : so that 
they err grossly who think of the right development even of the 
intellectual type as possible, unless we look to higher sources of 
beauty first.— P«. Ill, Sec. 1, Ch. U. 

SOUL CULTURE AND BODILY BEAUTY. 

7. There is a certain period of the soul culture when it begins 
to interfere with some of the characters of typical beauty belonging 
to the bodily frame, the stirring of the intellect wearing down the 



RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN ART 103 

flesh and the moral enthusiasm burning its way out to heaven, 
through the emaciation of the earthen vessel; and that there is, m 
this indication of subduing of the mortal by the immortal part an 
ideal glory of perhaps a purer and higher range than that ot the 
more perfect material form. We conceive, I think more nobly of 
the weak presence of Paul, than of the fair and ruddy countenance 
of Daniel.— Pi. IIL Sec. 1, Ch. I4. 

EFFECT OF LIFE HERE UPON THE BODY IN HEAVEN. 

10 David, ruddy and of fair countenance, with the brook stone 
of deiiverence in his hand, is not more ideal than David leaning on 
the old age of Barzillai, returning chastened to his kingly home. 
And they who are as the angels of God in heaven, yet cannot be con- 
ceived as so assimilated that their different experiences and affec- 
tions upon earth shall then be forgotten and effectless: the child 
taken early to his place cannot be imagined to wear there such a 
body, nor to have such thoughts, as the glorified apostle who has 
finished his course, and kept the faith on earth And so what- 
ever perfections and likeness of love we may attribute to either the 
tried or the crowned creatures, there is the difference of the stars 
in glory among them yet; differences of original gifts, though not 
of occupying till their Lord come, different dispensations of trial 
and of trust, of sorrow and support, both in their own inward, vari- 
able hearts, and in their positions of exposure or of peace, of the 
gourd shadow and the smiting sun, of calling at heat of day or 
eleventh hour, of the house unroofed by faith, and _ the clouds 
opened by revelation: differences in warning, m mercies, m sick- 
nesses, in^ signs, in time of calling to account; like only they all are 
by that which is not of them, but the gift of God's unchangeable 
mercy. "I will give unto this last even as unto thee. — P«. Ill, 
Sec. 1, Ch. U. 

EFFECT OF THE FALL UPON THE FUTURE BODY. 

11 Be it observed, that what we must determinedly banish from 
the human form and countenance in our seeking of its ideal, is not 
everything which can be ultimately traced to the Adamite fall for 
its cause, but only the immediate operation and presence of the 
degrading power of sin. For there is not any Pfrt of our feeling 
of nature, nor can there be through eternity, which shall not be 
in some way influenced and affected by the fall, and that not in any 
way of degradation, for the renewing in the divinity of Christ is 
a nobler condition than ever that of Paradise, and yet throughout 
eternity is must imply and refer to the disobedience and the cor- 
rupt state of sin and death, and the suffering of Christ himself, 
which can we conceive of any redeemed soul as for an instant tor- 
getting, or as remembering without sorrow? Neither are the alter- 



I04 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

nations of joy and such sorrow as by us is inconceivable, being only 
as it were a softness and silence in the pulse of an infinite felicity, 
inconsistent with the state even of the unfallen, for the angels who 
rejoice over repentance cannot but feel an uncomprehended pain 
as they try and try again in vain, whether they may not warm 
hard hearts with the brooding of their kind wings. — Pt. Ill, Sec. 1, 
Ch. 14- 

SIN WILL SEE SIN AND PURITY WILL SEE ITSELF. 

16. 17. The right ideal is to be reached only by the banishment 
of the immediate signs of sin upon the countenance and body. 
How, therefore, are the signs of sin to be known and separated? 

No intellectual operation is here of any avail. There is not any 
reasoning by which the evidences of depravity are to be traced in 
movements of muscle or forms of feature; there is not any knowl- 
edge, nor experience, nor diligence of comparison that can be of 
avail. Here, as throughout the operation of the theoretic faculty, 
the perception is altogether moral, an instinctive love and clinging 
to the lines of light. Nothing but love can read the letters, noth- 
ing but sympathy catch the sound, there is no pure passion that can 
be understood or painted except by pureness of heart; the foul or 
blunt feeling will see itself in everything, and set down blasphemies ; 
it will see Beelzebub in the casting out of devils, it will find its god 
of flies in every alabaster box of precious ointment. The indigna- 
tion of zeal towards God (nemesis) it will take for anger against 
man, faith and veneration it will miss of, as not comprehending, 
charity it will turn into lust, compassion into pride, every virtue 
it will go over against, like Shimei, casting dust. But the right 
Christian mind will in like manner find its own image w^herever it 
exists, it will seek for what it loves, and draw it out of all dens and 
caves, and it will believe in its being, often when it cannot see it, 
and always turn away its eyes from beholding vanity ; and so it will 
lie lovingly over all the faults and rough places of the human 
heart, as the snow from heaven does over the hard, and black, 
and broken mountain rocks, following their forms truly, and yet 
catching light for them to make them fair, and that must be a 
steep and unkindly crag indeed which it cannot cover. 

18. Now of this spirit there will always be little enough in the 
world, and it cannot be given nor taught by men, and so it is of 
little use to insist on it farther, only I may note some practical 
points respecting the ideal treatment of human form, which may be 
of use in these thoughtless days. There is not the face, I have 
said, which the painter may not make ideal if he choose, but that 
subtile feeling which shall find out all of good that there is in any 
given countenance is not, except by concern for other things than 
art, to be acquired. But certain broad indications of evil there 
are which the bluntest feeling may perceive, and which the habit 



RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN ART 105 

of distinguishing and casting out of would both ennoble the schools 
of art, and lead in time to greater acuteness of perception with re- 
spect to the less explicable characters of soul beauty. 

PRIDE DESTRUCTIVE OF BEAUTY. 

19. Those signs of evil which are commonly most manifest on 
the human features are roughly divisible into these four kinds, the 
signs of pride, of sensuality, of fear, and of cruelty. Any one of 
which will destroy the ideal character of the countenance and body. 

The first, pride, is perhaps the most destructive of all the four, 
seeing it is the undermost and original story of all sin; and it 
is base also from the necessary foolishness of it, because at its best, 
that is when grounded on a just estimation of our own elevation 
or superiority above certain others, it cannot but imply that our 
eyes look downward only, and have never been raised above our 
own measure, for there is not the man so lofty in his standing nor 
capacity but he must be humble in thinking of the cloud habita- 
tion and far sight of the angelic intelligences above him, and in 
perceiving what infinity there is of things he cannot know nor even 
reach unto, as it stands compared with that little body of things 
he can reach, and of which nevertheless he can altogether under- 
stand not one; not to speak of that wicked and fond attributing 
of such excellency as he may have to himself, and thinking of it 
as his own getting, which is the real essence and criminality of 
pride, nor of those viler forms of it, founded on false estimation 
of things beneath us and irrational contemning of them ; but taken 
at its best, it is still base to that degree that there is no grandeur of 
feature which it cannot destroy and make despicable, so that the 
first step towards the ennobling of any face is the ridding it of 
its vanity.— P^. ///, Sec. 1, Ch. U. 

SENSUALITY FATAL TO BEAUTY IN ART. 

21. That second destroyer of ideal form, the appearance of sen- 
sual character, though not less fatal in its operation on modern 
art, is more difficult to trace, owing to its peculiar subtlety. For it 
is not possible to say by what minute differences the right concep- 
tion of the human form is separated from that which is luscious 
and foul: for the root of all is in the love and seeking of the painter, 
who, if of impure and feeble mind, will cover all that he touches 
with clay staining, as Bandinelli puts a foul scent of human flesh 
about his marble Christ. 

24. With the religious painters such nudity as they were com- 
pelled to treat is redeemed as much by severity of form and hard- 
ness of line as by color, so that generally their draped figures are 
preferable, as in the Francia of our own gallery. But these, with 
Michael Angelo and the Venetians, except Titian, form a great 



io6 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

group, pure in sight and aim, between which and all other schools 
by which the nude has been treated, there is a gulf fixed, and all 
the rest, compared with them, seem striving how best to illustrate 
that of Spenser. 

"Of all God's works, which doe this worlde adorn, 
There is no one more faire, and excellent 
Than is man's body both for power and forme 
Whiles it is kept in sober government. 
But none than it more foul and indecent 
Distempered through misrule and passions bace," 

—PL III, Sec. 1, Ch. U. 

HOLY FEAR AND HUMAN TERROR. 

27. 28. Respecting those two other vices of the human face, the 
expressions of fear and ferocity, there is less to be noted, as they 
only occasionally enter into the conception of character. 

Among the children of God, while there is always that fearful 
and bowed apprehension of his majesty, and that sacred dread of 
all offence to him, which is called the fear of God, yet of real and 
essential fear there is not any but clinging of confidence to him, as 
their Rock, Fortress, and Deliverer, and perfect love, and casting 
out of fear, so that it is not possible that while the mind is rightly 
bent on him, there should be dread of anything either earthly or 
supernatural, and the more dreadful seems the height of his 
majesty, the less fear they feel that dwell in the shadow of it, ("Of 
whom shall I be afraid?") so that they are as David was, devoted 
to his fear ; whereas, on the other hand, those who, if they may help 
it, never conceive of God, but thrust away all thought and memory 
of him, and in his real terribleness and omnipresence fear him not 
nor know him, yet are of real, acute, piercing, and ignoble fear 
haunted for evermore; fear inconceiving and desperate that calls 
to the rocks, and hides in the dust; and hence the peculiar base- 
ness of the expression of terror, a baseness attributed to it in all 
times, and among all nations, as of a passion atheistical, brutal, and 
profane. So also, it is always joined with ferocity, which is of all 
passions the least human; for of sensual desires there is license 
to men, as necessity; and of vanity there is intellectual cause, so 
that when seen in a brute it is pleasant and a sign of good wit; 
and of fear there is at times necessity and excuse, as being allowed 
for prevention of harm ; but of ferocity there is no excuse nor pal- 
liation, but it is pure essence of tiger and demon, and it casts on the 
human face the paleness alike of the horse of Death, and the ashes 
of hell.— P^ III, Sec. 1, Ch. U. 



RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN ART 107 

GOOD SOMETIMES EXPRESSED BY EVIL MEN. 

8. It seems to me that much of what is great, and to all men 
beneficial, has been wrought by those who neither intended nor 
knew the good they did, and that many mighty harmonies have 
been discoursed by instruments that had been dumb or discordant, 
but that God knew their stops. The spirit of Prophecy consisted 
with the avarice of Balaam, and the disobedience of Saul. Could 
we spare from its page that parable, which he said, who saw the 
vision of the Almighty, falling into a trance, but having his eyes 
open, though we know that the sword of his punishment was then 
sharp in its sheath beneath him in the plains of Moab? or shall we 
not lament with David over the shield cast away on the Gilboa 
mountains, of him to whom God gave another heart that day when 
he turned his back to go from Samuel? It is not our part to look 
hardly, nor to look always, to the character or the deeds of men, 
but to accept from all of them, and to hold fast that which we can 
prove good, and feel to be ordained for us. We know that what- 
ever good there is in them is itself divine, and wherever we see 
the virtue of ardent labor and self-surrendering to a single purpose, 
wherever we find constant reference made to the written scripture 
of natural beauty, this at least we know is great and good, this we 
know is not granted by the counsel of God, without purpose, nor 
maintained without result. Their interpretation we may accept, 
into their labor we may enter, but they themselves must look to 
it, if what they do has no intent of good, nor any reference to the 
Giver of all gifts. Selfish in their industry, unchastened in their wills, 
ungrateful for the Spirit that is upon them, they may yet be helmed 
by that Spirit whithersoever the Governor listeth; involuntary in- 
struments they may become of others' good; unwillingly they may 
bless Israel, doubtingly discomfit Amalek, but shortcoming there 
will be of their glory, and sure of their punishment. — Pt. Ill, Sec. 1, 
Ch. IS. 

THE ROOT OF SCHISM AND THE FAILURE OP PREACHING. 

11. 12. It seems to me that the real sources of bluntness in the 
feelings towards the splendor of the grass and glory of the flower, 
are less to be found in ardor of occupation, in seriousness of com- 
passion, or heavenliness of desire, than in the turning of the eye 
at intervals of rest too selfishly within ; the want of power to shake 
off the anxieties of actual and near interest, and to leave results in 
God's hands; the scorn of all that does not seem immediately apt 
for our purposes, or open to our understanding, and perhaps some- 
thing of pride, which desires rather to investigate than to feel. I 
believe that the root of almost every schism and heresy from which 
the Christian church has ever suffered, has been the effort of men 
to earn, rather than to receive, their salvation; and that the reason 



io8 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

that preaching is so commonly ineffectual is, that it calls on men 
oftener to work for God, than to behold God working for them. If, 
for every rebuke that we utter of men's vices, we put forth a claim 
upon their hearts; if for every assertion of God's demands from 
them, we could substitute a display of his kindness to them; if 
side by side with every warning of death, we could exhibit proofs 
and promises of immortality; if, in fine, instead of assuming the 
being of an awful Deity, which men, though they cannot and dare 
not deny, are always unwilling, sometimes unable, to conceive, we 
were to show them a near, visible, inevitable, but all beneficent 
Deity, whose presence makes the earth itself a heaven, I think there 
would be fewer deaf children sitting in the market-place. 

GOD VISIBLE THROUGH SERVICE. 

At all events, whatever may be the inability in this present life 
to mingle the full enjoyment of the Divine works with the full 
discharge of every practical duty, and confessedly in many cases 
this must be, let us not attribute the inconsistency to any indignity ' 
of the faculty of contemplation, but to the sin and the suffering 
of the fallen state, and the change of order from the keeping of 
the garden to the tilling of the ground. We cannot say how far it 
is right or agreeable with God's will, while men are perishing round 
about us, while grief, and pain, and wrath, and impiety, and death, 
and all the powers of the air, are working wildly and evermore, and 
the cry of blood going up to heaven, that any of us should take hand 
from the plough; but this we know, that there will come a time 
when the service of God shall be the beholding of him ; and though 
in these stormy seas, where we are now driven up and down, his 
Spirit is dimly seen on the face of the waters, and we are left to 
cast anchors out of the stern, and wish for the day, that day will 
come, when, with the evangelists on the crystal and stable sea, all 
the creatures of God shall be full of eyes within, and there shall 
be "no more curse, but his servants shall serve him, and shall see 
his face."— P#. HI, Sec. 1, Ch. 15. 

THE DIGNITY OF HUMAN IMAGINATION. 

9. A powerfully imaginative mind seizes and combines at the 
same instant, not only two, but all the important ideas of its poem 
or picture, and while it works with any one of them, it is at the 
same instant working with and modifying all in their relations 
to it, never losing sight of their bearings on each other; as the 
motion of a snake's body goes through all parts at once, and its 
volition acts at the same instant in coils that go contrary ways. 

This faculty is indeed something that looks as if man were made 
after the image of God. It is inconceivable, admirable, altogether 
divine; and yet wonderful as it may seem, it is palpably evident 



RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN ART 109 

that no less an operation is necessary for the production of any 
great work, for, by the definition of unity of membership, (the 
essential characteristic of greatness,) not only certain couples or 
groups of parts, but all the parts of a noble work must be separately 
imperfect ; each must imply, and ask for all the rest, and the glory 
of every one of them must consist in its relation to the rest, neither 
while so much as one is wanting can any be right. 

WHAT THE HUMAN MIND CANNOT DO. 

10. There is, however, a limit to the power of all human im- 
agination. When the relations to be observed are absolutely nec- 
essary, and highly complicated, the mind cannot grasp them, and 
the result is a total deprivation of all power of imagination associa- 
tive in such matter. For this reason, no human mind has ever 
conceived a new animal. For as it is evident that in an animal, 
every part implies all the rest; that is, the form of the eye involves 
the form of the brow and nose, these the form of the forehead and 
lip, these of the head and chin, and so on, so that it is physically 
impossible to conceive of any one of these members, unless we 
conceive the relation it bears to the whole animal ; and as this rela- 
tion is necessary, certain, and complicated, allowing of no license 
or inaccuracy, the intellect utterly fails under the load, and is re- 
duced to mere composition, putting the bird's wing on men's 
shoulders, or half the human body to half the horse's, in doing 
which there is no action of imagination, but only of fancy; though 
in the treatment and contemplation of the compound form there 
may be much imagination. — Pt. Ill, Sec. 2, Ch. 2. 

tintoret's great picture of the crucifixion. 

20. The most exquisite instance of this imaginative power occurs 
in an incident in the background of the Crucifixion. I will not 
insult this marvellous picture by an effort at a verbal account 
of it. I would not whitewash it with praise, and I refer to it only 
for the sake of two thoughts peculiarly illustrative of the intellectual 
faculty immediately under discussion. In the common and most 
catholic treatment of the subject, the mind is either painfully di- 
rected to the bodily agony, coarsely expressed by outward anatomi- 
cal signs, or else it is permitted to rest on that countenance incon- 
ceivable by man at any time, but chiefly so in this its consum- 
mated humiliation. In the first case, the representation is revolting; 
in the second, inefficient, false, and sometimes blasphemous. None 
even of the greatest religious painters have ever, so far as I know, 
succeeded here. . . . But Tintoret here, as in all other cases, pene- 
trating into the root and deep places of his subject, despising all 
outward and bodily appearances of pain, and seeking for some 
means of expressing, not the rack of nerve or sinew, but the fainting 



no TEE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

of the deserted Son of God before his Eloi cry, and yet feeling 
himself utterly unequal to the expression of this by the countenance, 
has on the one hand filled his picture with such various and im- 
petuous muscular exertion that the body of the Crucified is, by 
comparison, in perfect repose, and on the other has cast the counte- 
nance altogether into shade. But the agony is told by this, and 
by this only, that though there yet remains a chasm of light on 
the mountain horizon where the earthquake darkness closes upon 
the day, the broad and sunlight glory about the head of the Re- 
deemer has become wan, and of the color of ashes. 

But the great painter felt he had something more to do yet. 
Not only that agony of the Crucified, but the tumult of the peo- 
ple, that rage which invoked his blood upon them and their chil- 
dren. Not only the brutality of the soldier, the apathy of the 
centurion, nor any other merely instrumental cause of the Divine 
suffering, but the fury of his own people, the noise against him of 
those for whom he died, were to be set before the eye of the under- 
standing, if the power of the picture was to be complete. This rage, 
be it remembered, was one of disappointed pride; and the disap- 
pointment dated essentially from the time when, but five days be- 
fore, the King of Zion came, and was received with hosannahs, rid- 
ing upon an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass. To this time, then, 
it was necessary to direct the thoughts, for therein are found both 
the cause and the character, the excitement of, and the witness 
against, this madness of the people. In the shadow behind the 
cross, a man, riding on an ass colt, looks back to the multitude, 
while he points with a rod to the Christ crucified. The ass is feed- 
ing on the remnants of withered palm-leaves. — Pt. Ill, Sec. 2, Ch. 3. 

THE JUDGMENT DAY BY TINTORET. 

24. By Tintoret only has this unmanageable event been grappled 
with in its verity; not typically nor symbolically, but as they may 
see it who shall not sleep, but be changed. Only one traditional 
circumstance he has received with Dante and Michael Angelo, the 
boat of the condemned; but the impetuosity of his mind bursts 
out even in the adoption of this image, he has not stopped at the 
scowling ferryman of the one nor at the sweeping blow and demon 
dragging of the other, but, seized Hylas-like by the limbs, and 
tearing up the earth in his agony, the victim is dashed into his 
destruction ; nor is it the sluggish Lethe, nor the fiery lake that bears 
the cursed vessel, but the oceans of the earth and the waters of 
the firmament gathered into one white, ghastly cataract, the river 
of the wrath of God, roaring down into the gulf where the world 
has melted with its fervent heat, choked with the ruin of nations, 
and the limbs of its corpses tossed out of its whirling, like water- 
wheels. Bat-like, out of the holes and caverns and shadows of the 



RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN ART m 

earth, the bones gather, and the clay-heaps heave, rattling and 
adhering into half-kneaded anatomies, that crawl, and startle, and 
struggle up among the putrid weeds, with the clay clinging to their 
clotted hair, and their heavy eyes sealed by the earth darkness yet, 
like his of old who went his way unseeing to Siloam Pool ; shaking 
off one by one the dreams of the prison-house, hardly hearing the 
clangor of the trumpets of the armies of God, blinded yet more, 
as they awake, by the white light of the new Heaven, until the 
great vortex of the four winds bears up their bodies to the judg- 
ment seat: the firmament is all full of them, a very dust of human 
souls, that drifts, and floats, and falls in the interminable, inevita- 
ble light; the bright clouds are darkened with them as with thick 
snow, currents of atom life in the arteries of heaven, now soaring 
up slowly, farther, and higher, and higher still, till the eye and 
the thought can follow no farther, borne up, wingless, by their in- 
ward faith and by the angel powers invisible, now hurled in count- 
less drifts of horror before the breath of their condemnation. 

THE SUPERNATURAL IN GREAT PICTURES. 

25. The power of every picture depends on the penetration of 
the imagination into the true nature of the thing represented, 
and on the utter scorn of the imagination for all shackles and 
fetters of mere external fact that stand in the way of its suggestive- 
ness. In the Baptism it cuts away the trunks of trees as if they 
were so much cloud or vapor, that it may exhibit to the thought 
the completed sequency of the scene; in the Massacre, it covers the 
marble floor with visionary light, that it may strike terror into the 
spectator without condescending to butchery; it defies the bare fact, 
but creates in him the fearful feeling; in the Crucifixion it anni- 
hilates locality, and brings the palm-leaves to Calvary, so only that 
it may bear the mind to the mount of Olives, as in the entomb- 
ment it brings the manger to Jerusalem, that it may take the heart 
to Bethlehem; and all this it does in the daring consciousness of 
its higher and spiritual verity, and in the entire knowledge of the 
fact and substance of all that it touches. The imaginary boat of 
the demon angel expands the rush of the visible river into the 
descent of irresistible condemnation; but to make that rush and 
roar felt by the eye and heard by the ear, the rending of the pine 
branches above the cataract is taken directly from nature; it is 
an abstract of Alpine storm. — Pt. Ill, Sec. ^, Ch, 3. 

MANIFESTATION OF THE SUPERNATURAL. 

2. There are four ways in which beings supernatural may be 
conceived as manifesting themselves to human sense. The first, 
by external types, signs, or influences; as God to Moses in the 
flames of the bush, and to Elijah in the voice of Horeb. 



112 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

The second, by the assuming of a form not properly belonging 
to them; as the Holy Spirit of that of a Dove, the second person 
of the Trinity of that of a lamb ; and so such manifestations, under 
angelic or other form, of the first person of the Trinity, as seem 
to have been made to Abraham, Moses and Ezekiel. 

The third, by the manifestation of a form properly belonging 
to them, but not necessarily seen; as of the Risen Christ to his 
disciples when the doors were shut. And the fourth, by their 
operation on the human form, which they influence or inspire, 
as in the shining of the face of Moses. 

It is evident that in all these cases, wherever there is form at 
all, it is the form of some creature to us known. It is no new 
form peculiar to spirit nor can it be. We can conceive of none. Our 
inquiry is simply, therefore, by what modifications those creature 
forms to us known, as of a lamb, a bird, or a human creature, 
may be explained as signs or habitations of Divinity, or of angelic 
essence, and not creatures such as they seem. — Pt. Ill, Sec. 2, Ch. 5. 

ART HAS NOT SUCCESSFULLY REPRESENTED CHRIST. 

7. Of that which is more than creature, no creature ever con- 
ceived. I think this almost self-evident, for it is clear that the il- 
limitableness of Divine attributes cannot be by matter represented, 
(though it may be typified,) and I believe that all who are ac- 
quainted with the range of sacred art will admit, not only that no 
representation of Christ has ever been even partially successful, 
but that the greatest painters fall therein below their accustomed 
level; Perugino and Fra Angelico especially; Leonari has I think 
done best, but perhaps the beauty of the fragment left at Milan, is 
as much dependent on the very untraceableness resulting from in- 
jury as on its original perfection. — Ft. Ill, Sec. 2, Ch. 5. 

GREEK ART COMPARED WITH CHRISTIAN ART. 

20. Of whatever kind or degree the shortcoming may be, it is not 
possible but that shortcoming should be visible in every pagan con- 
ception, when set beside Christian ; and, believing, for my own part^ 
that there is not only deficiency, but such difference in kind as 
must make all Greek conception full of danger to the student in 
proportion to his admiration of it; as I think has been fatally 
seen in its effect on the Italian schools when its pernicious ele- 
ment first mingled with their solemn purity, and recently in its 
influence on the French historical painters: neither can I from 
•my present knowledge fix upon an ancient statue which expresses 
by the countenance any one elevated character of the soul, or any 
single enthusiastic self-abandoning affection, much less any such 
majesty of feeling as might mark the features for supernatural. 
The Grreek could not conceive a spirit; he could do nothing with 



RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN ART 115 

out limbs; his god is a finite god, talking, pursuing, and going 
journeys; if at any time he was touched with a true feeling of 
the unseen powers around him, it was in the field of poised bat- 
tle, for there is something in the near coming of the shadow of 
death, something in the devoted fulfilment of mortal duty, that 
reveals the real God, though darkly ; . . . and yet what were the 
Greek's thoughts of his god of battle? No spirit power was in the 
vision; it was a being of clay strength and human passion, foul, 
fierce, and changeful; of penetrable arms and vulnerable flesh. 
Gather what we may of great, from pagan chisel or pagan dream, 
and set it beside the orderer of Christian warfare, Michael the Arch- 
angel: not Milton's "with hostile brow and visage all inflamed," 
not even Milton's in kingly treading of the hills of Paradise, not 
Raffaelle's with the expanded wings and brandished spear, but 
Perugino's with his triple crest of traceless plume unshaken 'in 
heaven, his hand fallen on his crossleted sword, the truth girdle 
binding his undinted armor; God has put his power upon him, 
resistless radiance is on his limbs, no lines are there of earthly 
strength, no trace on the divine features of earthly anger; trust- 
ful and thoughtful, fearless, but full of love, incapable except of 
the repose of eternal conquest, vessel and instrument of Omnipo- 
tence, filled like a cloud with the victor light, the dust of prin- 
cipalities and powers beneath his feet, the murmur of hell against 
him heard by his spiritual ear like the winding of a shell on the 
far-off seashore.— P^. Ill, Sec. 2, Ch. 5. 

HIGHEST EXPRESSION OF ART IN CHRISTIAN THEMES. 

21. The field of sacred history, the intent and scope of Chris- 
tian feeling, are too wide and exalted to admit of the juxtaposition 
of any other sphere or order of conception; they embrace all other 
fields like the dome of heaven. With what comparison shall we 
compare the types of the martyr saints, the St. Stephen of Fra 
Bartolomeo, with his calm forehead crowned by the stony diadem, 
or the St. Catherine of Raffaelle looking up to heaven in the dawn 
of the eternal day, with her lips parted in the resting from her 
pain? or with what the Madonnas of Francia and Pinturicchio, in 
whom the hues of the morning and the solemnity of the eve, the 
gladness in accomplished promise, and sorrow of the sword-pierced 
heart, are gathered into one human lamp of ineffable love? or with 
w^hat the angel choirs of Angelico, with the flames on their white 
foreheads waving brighter as they move, and the sparkles stream- 
ing from their purple wings like the glitter of many suns upon a 
sounding sea, listening, in the pauses of alternate song, for the pro- 
longing "of the trumpet blast, and the answering of psaltery and 
cvmbal, throughout the endless deep and from all the star shores 
of heaven?— P^. Ill, Sec. S, Ch. 5. 



Ill 

MODERN PAINTERS. 
Vol. III. (1856.) 

Part IV. "Op Many Things"— 18 Chaps. 

Ten years had passed since Ruskin issued his second volume of 
this great work, containing Parts I to III, This third volume is 
Part IV, and in it, the author treats "of many things" in art : each 
one of the eighteen chapters being devoted to a separate subject. 
Chief among these subjects are "Style," "Realization," "Ideal," 
"Novelty," and "Landscape." 

In the preface the author tells us that he had given these ten 
years of his life to the "single purpose of enabling myself to judge 
rightly of art." 

In chapter VII on "The True Ideal — Naturalist," he claims the 
attributes of a seer for all great artists: — 

"All the great men see what they paint before they paint it, — see 
it in a perfectly passive manner, — cannot help seeing it if they would ; 
whether in their mind's eye, or in bodily fact, does not matter ; very 
often the mental vision is, I believe, in men of imagination, clearer 
than the bodily one; but vision it is, of one kind or another, — the 
whole scene, character, or incident passing before them as in second 
sight, whether they will or no, and requiring them to paint it as they 
see it; they not daring, under the might of its presence, to alter 
one jot or tittle of it as they write it down or paint it down; it 
being to them in its own kind and degree always a true vision or 
Apocalypse, and invariably accompanied in their hearts by a feel- 
ing correspondent to the words, — ' Write the things which thou hast 
seen, and the things which are.' " 

Although written at the time when passing through the critical 
change in faith and doctrine,* the volume, as a whole, furnishes 
abundant evidence of the religious mind of Ruskin of which the 
following selections are witnesses : 

1 See Chapters on "The Religious Mind of Ruskin." 

114 



RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN ART 115 

THE RIGHT USE OF THE IMAGINATION. 

Its first and noblest use is, to enable us to bring sensibly to our 
sight the things which are recorded as belonging to our future state, 
or as invisibly surrounding us in this. It is given us that we may 
imagine the cloud of witnesses in heaven and earth, and see, as if 
they were now present, the souls of the righteous waiting for us; 
that we may conceive the great army of the inhabitants of heaven, 
and discover among them those whom we most desire to be with for 
ever; that we may be able to vision forth the ministry of angels 
beside us, and see the chariots of fire on the mountains that gird 
us round; but above all, to call up the scenes and facts in which 
we are commanded to believe, and be present, as if in the body, 
at every recorded event of the history of the Redeemer. — Pt. IV, 
Ch. 1. 

CHRIST AT LAKE OF GALILEE — PETERS BOLD SWIM. 

16. I suppose there is no event in the whole life of Christ to 
which, in hours of doubt or fear, men turn with more anxious 
thirst to know the close facts of it, or with more earnest and pas- 
sionate dwelling upon every syllable of its recorded narrative, than 
Christ's showing Himself to his disciples at the lake of Galilee. 
There is something pre-eminently open, natural, full fronting our 
disbelief in this manifestation. The others, recorded after the resur- 
ireotion, were sudden, phantom-like, occurring to men in pro- 
found sorrow and wearied agitation of heart; not, it might seem, 
safe judges of what they saw. But the agitation was now over. 
They had gone back to their daily work, thinking still their busi- 
ness lay netwards, unmeshed from the literal rope and drag. "Si- 
mon Peter saith unto them, 'I go a fishing.' They say unto him, 
*We also go with thee.' " True words enough, and having far echo 
beyond those Galilean hills. That night they caught nothing; but 
when the morning came, in the clear light of it, behold a figure 
stood on the shore. They were not thinking of anything but their 
fruitless hauls. They had no guess who it was. It asked them 
simply if they had caught anything. They^ said no. And it tells 
them to cast yet again. And John shades his eyes from the morn- 
ing sun with his hand, to look who it is; and though the glinting 
of the sea, too, dazzles him, he makes out who it is, at last; and 
poor Simon, not to be outrun this time, tightens his fisher's coat 
about him, and dashes in, over the nets. One would have liked 
to see him swim those hundred yards, and stagger to his knees on 
the beach. 

Well, the others get to the beach, too, in time, in such slow way 
as men in general do get, in this world, to its true shore, much 
impeded by that wonderful "dragging the net with fishes;" but 
they get there — seven of them in all ; first the Denier, and then the 



ii6 TEE RELIGION OF RUSK IN 

slowest believer, and then the quickest believer, and then the two 
throne-seekers, and two more, we know not who. 

They sit down on the shore face to face with Him, and eat their 
broiled fish as He bids. And then, to Peter, all dripping still, shiv- 
ering, and amazed, staring at Christ in the sun, on the other side 
of the coal fire, — thinking a little, perhaps, of what happened by 
another coal fire, when it was colder, and having had no word 
once changed with him by his Master since that look of His, — to 
him, so amazed, comes the question, "Simon, lovest thou me?" — 
PL IV, Ch. 4- 

ART IN RELIGION — A FAILURE. 

20. Has there, then, been no true religious ideal? Has religious 
art never been of any service to mankind? I fear, on the whole, 
not. Of true religious ideal, representing events historically re- 
corded, with solemn effort at a sincere and unartificial conception, 
there exist, as yet, hardly any examples. Nearly all good religious 
pictures fall into one or other branch of the false ideal, either into 
the Angelican (passionate ideal) or the Raphaelesque (philosophi- 
cal ideal). But there is one true form of religious art, neverthe- 
less, in the pictures of the passionate ideal which represent jmag- 
inary beings of another world. Since it is evidently right that we 
should try to imagine the glories of the next world, and as this im- 
agination must be, in each separate mind, more or less different, and 
unconfined by any laws of material fact, the passionate ideal has not 
only full scope here, but it becomes our duty to urge its power 
to its utmost, so that every condition of beautiful form and color 
may be employed to invest these scenes with greater delightful- 
ness (the whole being, of course, received as an assertion of pos- 
sibility, not of absolute fact). All the paradises imagined by the 
religious painters — the choirs of glorified saints, angels, and spir- 
itual powers, when painted with full belief in this possibility of 
their existence, are true ideals. . . . Nothing but unmixed good can 
accrue to any mind from the contemplation of Orcagna's Last Judg- 
ment or his Triumph of Death, of Angelico's Last Judgment and 
Paradise, or any of the scenes laid in heaven by the other faith- 
ful religious masters; and the more they are considered, not as 
works of art, but as real visions of real things, more or less imper- 
fectly set down, the more good will be got by dwelling upon them. 
The same is true of all representations of Christ as a living pres- 
ence among us now, as in Hunt's Light of the World. — Pt. IV, 
Ch. 4. 

FUTURE OP ART IN RELIGIOUS SERVICE. 

If we would cherish the hope that sacred art may, indeed, ariee 
for us, two separate cautions are to be addressed to the two opposed 
classes of religionists whose influence will chiefly retard that hope's 



RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN ART 117 

accomplishment. The group calling themselves Evangelical ought 
no longer to render their religion an offence to the men of the 
world by associating it only with the most vulgar forms of art. It 
is not necessary that they should admit either music or painting 
into religious service; but, if they admit either the one or the 
other, let it not be bad music nor bad painting: it is certainly in 
nowise more for Christ's honor that His praise should be sung dis- 
cordantly, or His miracles painted discreditably, than that His word 
should be preached ungrammatically. Some Evangelicals, how- 
ever, seem to take a morbid pride in the triple degradation. — Pt. 
IV, Ch. 4. 

NO VULGARITY IN TRUTH. 

9. There is, indeed, perhaps, no greater sign of innate and real 
vulgarity of mind or defective education than the want of power 
to understand the universality of the ideal truth; the absence of 
sympathy with the colossal grasp of those intellects, which have in 
them so much of divine, that nothing is small to them, and noth- 
ing large ; but with equal and unoffended vision they take in the sum 
of the world. ... A certain portion of this divine spirit is visible 
even in the lower examples of all the true men ; it is, indeed, per- 
haps, the clearest test of their belonging to the true and great 
group, that they are continually touching what to the multitude 
appear vulgarities. The higher a man stands, the more the word 
"vulgar" becomes unintelligible to him. Vulgar? what, that poor 
farmer's girl of William Hunt's, bred in the stable, putting on 
her Sunday gown, and pinning her best cap out of the green and 
red pin-cushion? Not so; she may be straight on the road to those 
high heavens, and may shine hereafter as one of the stars in the fir- 
mament forever. Nay, even that lady in the satin bodice with her arm 
laid over a balustrade to show it, and her eyes turned up to heaven 
to show them ; and the sportsman waving his rifle for the terror of 
beasts, and displaying his perfect dress for the delight of men, are 
kept, by the very misery and vanity of them, in the thoughts of 
a great painter, at a sorrowful level, somewhat above vulgarity. It 
is only when the minor painter takes them on his easel, that they 
become things for the universe to be ashamed of. 

We may dismiss this matter of vulgarity in plain and few words, 
at least as far as regards art. There is never vulgarity in a whole 
truth, however commonplace. It may be unimportant or painful. 
It cannot be vulgar. Vulgarity is only in concealment of truth, or 
in affectation.— P<. IV, Ch. 7. 

GENIUS. 

10. Every great composition is in perfect harmony with all true 
rules, and involves thousands too delicate for ear, or eye, or thought, 
to trace; still it is possible to reason, with infinite pleasure and 



ii8 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

profit, about these principles, when the thing is once done ; only, all 
our reasoning will not enable any one to do another thing like 
it, because all reasoning falls infinitely short of the divine instinct. 
Thus we may reason wisely over the way a bee builds its comb, and 
be profited by finding out certain things about the angles of it. 
But the bee knows nothing about those matters. It builds its 
comb in a far more inevitable way. And, from a bee to Paul 
Veronese, all master-workers work with this awful, this inspired un- 
consciousness. — Pt. IV, Ch. 7. 

GOD THE ONLY FINISHER. 

5. Our best finishing is but coarse and blundering work after all. 
We may smooth, and soften, and sharpen till we are sick at heart; 
but take a good magnifying glass to our miracle of skill, and the 
invisible edge is a jagged saw, and the silky thread a rugged cable, 
and the soft surface a granite desert. Let all the ingenuity and 
all the art of the human race be brought to bear upon the attain- 
ment of the utmost possible finish, and they could not do what is 
done in the foot of a fly, or the film of a bubble. God alone can 
finish; and the more intelligent the human mind becomes, the 
more the infiniteness of interval is felt between human and divine 
work in this respect. — Pt. IV, Ch. 9. 

INSPIRED MEN. 

22. Greatness in art (as assuredly in all other things, but more 
distinctly in this than in most of them), is not a teachable nor 
gainable thing, but the expression of the mind of a God-made great 
ffian; that teach, or preach, or labor as you will, everlasting dif- 
ference is set between one man's capacity and another's; and that 
this God-given supremacy is the priceless thing, always just as rare 
in the world at one time as another. What you can manufacture, 
or communicate, you can lower the price of, but this mental su- 
premacy is incommunicable; you will never multiply its quantity, 
nor lower its price; and nearly the best thing that men can gen- 
erally do is to set themselves, not to the attainment, but the dis- 
covery of this; learning to know gold, when we see it, from iron- 
glance, and diamonds from flint-sand, being for most of us a more 
profitable employment than trying to make diamonds out of our 
own charcoal. And for this God-made supremacy, I generally have 
used, and shall continue to use, the word Inspiration, not carelessly 
nor lightly, but in all logical calmness and perfect reverence. — 
Pt. IV, Ch. 10. 

CHRIST AND THE MOUNTAINS. 

10. Commended as it was to all men by the continual practice of 
Christ himself, — gave to all mountain solitude at once a sanctity 
and a terror, in the Mediaeval mind, which were altogether differ- 



RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN ART 119 

ent from anything that it had possessed in the un-Christian pe- 
riods. On the one side, there was an idea of sanctity attached to 
rocky wilderness, because it had always been among hills that the 
Deity had manifested himself most intimately to men, and to the 
hills that His saints had nearly always retired for meditation, for 
especial communion with Him, and to prepare for death. Men 
acquainted with the history of Moses, alone at Horeb, or with Israel 
at Sinai, — of Elijah by the brook Cherith, and in the Horeb cave; 
of the deaths of Moses and Aaron on Hor and Nebo ; of the prepara- 
tion of Jephthah's daughter for her death among the Judea Moun- 
tains; of the continual retirement of Christ Himself to the moun- 
tains for prayer. His temptation in the desert of the Dead Sea, His 
sermon on the hills of Capernaum, His transfiguration on the crest 
of Tabor, and His evening and morning walks over Olivet for the 
four or five days preceding His crucifixion, — were not likely to 
look with irreverent or unloving eyes upon the blue hills that girded 
their golden horizon, or drew upon them the mysterious clouds out 
of the height of the darker heaven. But with this impression of 
their greater sanctity was involved also that of a peculiar terror. 
In all this, — their haunting by the memories of prophets, the pres- 
ences of angels, and the everlasting thoughts and words of the 
Redeemer, — the mountain ranges seemed separated from the active 
world, and only to be fitly approached by hearts which were con- 
demnatory of it. Just in so much as it appeared necessary for 
the noblest men to retire to the hill-recesses before their missions 
could be accomplished or their spirits perfected, in so far did the 
daily world seem by comparison to be pronounced profane and 
dangerous; and to those who loved that world, and its work, the 
mountains were thus voiceful with perpetual rebuke, and necessarily 
contemplated with a kind of pain and fear, such as a man en- 
grossed by vanity feels at being by some accident forced to hear a 
startling sermon, or to assist at a funeral service. Every associa- 
tion of this kind was deepened by the practice and the precept of 
the time; and thousands of hearts, which might otherwise have 
felt that there was loveliness in the wild landscape, shrank from 
it in dread, because they knew that the monk retired to it for 
penance, and the hermit for contemplation. — Pt. IV, Ch. I4.. 



GOD S WISDOM AS SEEN IN THE GRASS OF THE FIELD. 

51. Gather a single blade of grass, and examine for a minute, 
quietly, its narrow sword-shaped strip of fluted green. Nothing, 
as it seems there, of notable goodness or beauty. A very little 
strength, and a very little tallness, and a few delicate long lines 
meeting in a point, — not a perfect point neither, but blunt and 
unfinished, by no means a creditable or apparently much cared for 
example of Nature's workmanship; made, as it seems, only to be 



X20 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

trodden on to-day, and to-morrow to be cast into the oven; and a 
little pale and hollow stalk, feeble and flaccid, leading down to the 
dull brown fibres of roots. And yet, think of it well, and judge 
whether of all the gorgeous flowers that beam in summer air, and 
of all strong and goodly trees, pleasant to the eyes and good for 
food, — stately palm and pine, strong ash and oak, scented citron, 
burdened vine, — there be any by man so deeply loved, by God 
so highly graced, as that narrow point of feeble green. It seems 
to me not to have been without a peculiar significance, that our 
Lord, when about to work the miracle which, of all that He showed, 
appears to have been felt by the multitude as the most impressive, 
> — the miracle of the loaves, — commanded the people to sit down by 
companies "upon the green grass." He was about to feed them 
with the principal produce of earth and the sea, the simplest rep- 
resentations of the food of mankind. He gave them the seed of 
the herb; He bade them sit down upon the herb itself, which was 
as great a gift, in its fitness for their joy and rest, as its perfect 
fruit, for their sustenance; thus, in this single order and act, when 
rightly understood, indicating for evermore how the Creator had 
entrusted the comfort, consolation, and sustenance of man, to the 
simplest and most despised of all the leafy families of the earth. 
And well does it fulfil its mission. Consider what we owe merely 
to the meadow grass, to the covering of the dark ground by that 
glorious enamel, by the companies of those soft, and countless, and 
peaceful spears. The fields! Follow but forth for a little time 
the thoughts of all that we ought to recognize in those words. All 
spring and summer is in them, — the walks by silent, scented paths, 
— the rests in noonday heat, — the joy of herds and flocks, — the 
power of all shepherd life and meditation, — the life of sunlight 
upon the world, falling in emerald streaks, and falling in soft blue 
shadows, where else it would have struck upon the dark mould, or 
scorching dust, — pastures beside the pacing brooks, — soft banks and 
knolls of lowly hills, — thymy slopes of down overlooked by the blue 
line of lifted sea, — crisp lawns all dim with early dew, or smooth in 
evening warmth of barred sunshine, dinted by happy feet, and soft- 
ening in their fall the sound of loving voices ; all these are summed 
in those simple words; and these are not all. We may not meas- 
ure to the full the depth of this heavenly gift,^ in our own land; 
though still, as we think of it longer, the infinite of that meadow 
sweetness, Shakspeare's peculiar joy, would open on us more and 
more, yet we have it but in part. Go out, in the spring time, 
among the meadows that slope from the shores of the Swiss lakes 
to the roots of their lower mountains. There, mingled with the 
taller gentians and the white narcissus, the grass grows deep and 
free; and as you follow the winding mountain paths, beneath 
arching boughs all veiled and dim with blossom, — paths that for^ 
ever droop and rise over the green banks and mounds sweeping 



RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN ART 121 

'down in scented undulation, steep to the blue water, studded here 
and there with new mown heaps, filling all the air with fainter 
sweetness, — look up towards the higher hills, where the waves of 
everlasting green roll silently into their long inlets among the 
shadows of the pines ; and we may, perhaps, at last know the mean- 
ing of those quiet words of the 147th Psalm, "He maketh grass to 
grow upon the mountains." — Pt. IV, Ch. I4.. 

SCRIPTURE IMAGERY IN THE GRASS. 

53. As the grass of the earth leads us to the place where our 
Lord commanded the multitude to sit down by companies upon 
the green grass; so the grass of the waters, thought of as sustain- 
ing itself among the waters of affliction, leads us to the place where 
a stem of it was put into our Lord's hand for his sceptre; and in 
the crown of thorns, and the rod of reed, was foreshown the ever- 
lasting truth of the Christian ages — that all glory was to^be begun 
in suffering, and all power in humility. 

Assembling the images we have traced, and adding the simplest 
of all, from Isaiah xl. 6, we find, the grass and flowers are types, 
in their passing, of the passing of human life, and, in their excel- 
lence, of the excellence of human life; and this in a twofold way; 
first, by their Beneficence, and then, by their endurance: — the 
grass of the earth, in giving the seed of corn, and in its beauty 
under tread of foot and stroke of scythe ; and the grass of the waters, 
in giving its freshness for our rest, and in its bending before the 
wave.' But understood in the broad human and Divine sense, the 
"herb yielding seed" (as opposed to the fruit-tree yielding fruit) 
includes a third family of plants, and fulfils a third office to the 
human race. It includes the great family of the lints and flaxes, 
and fulfils thus the three offices of giving food, raiment, and rest. 
Follow out this fulfilment; consider the association of the linen 
garment and the linen embroidery, with the priestly office, and 
the furniture of the tabernacle; and consider how the rush has 
been, in all time, the first natural carpet thrown under the human 
foot. Then next observe the three virtues definitely set forth by 
the three families of plants; not arbitrarily or fancifully associated 
with them, but in all the three cases marked for us by Scriptural 
words : 

1st. Cheerfulness, or joyful serenity; in the grass for food and 
beauty. — "Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil 
not, neither do they spin." 

2d. Humility; in the grass for rest. — "A bruised reed shall He 
not break." 

* So also in Isa. xxxv. 7, the prevalence of righteousness and peace over all 
evil is thus foretold : "In the habitation of dragons, where each lay, shall be 
grass, with reeds and rushes." 



122' THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

3d. Love; in the grass for clothing (because of its swift kin- 
dling). — "The smoking flax shall He not quench." 

And then, finally observe the confirmation of these last two 
images in, I suppose, the most important prophecy, relating to the 
future state of the Christian Church, which occurs in the Old Testa- 
ment, namely, that contained in the closing chapters of Ezekiel. 
The measures of the Temple of God are to be taken; and because 
it is only by charity and humility that those measures ever can 
be taken, the angel has "a line of flax in his hand, and a measur- 
ing reed." The use of the line was to measure the land, and of the 
reed to take the dimensions of the buildings; so the buildings of 
the church, or its labors, are to be measured by humility, and its 
territory or land, by love. — Pt. IV, Ch. 14- 

THE GREATNESS OF TRUE HUMILITY. 

24. I believe the first test of a truly great man is his humility. 
I do not mean, by humility, doubt of his own power, 
or hesitation in speaking of his opinions, but a right under- 
standing of the relation between what he can do and say, 
and the rest of the world's sayings and doings. All great 
men not only know their business, but usually know that they 
know it; and are not only right in their main opinions, but they 
usually know that they are right in them; only they do not thiuK 
much of themselves on that account. Arnolfo knows he can build 
a good dome at Florence; Albert Durer writes calmly to one who 
had found fault with his work, "It cannot be better done;" Sir 
Isaac Newton knows that he has worked out a problem or two that 
would have puzzled anybody else; — only they do not expect their 
fellowmen therefore to fall down and worship them; they have a 
curious under-sense of powerlessness, feeling that the greatness is 
not in them, but through them ; that they could not do or be any- 
thing else than God made them. And they see something divine 
and God-made in every other man they meet, and are endlessly, 
foolishly, incredibly merciful. — Pt. IV, Ch. 16. 

SELFISHNESS AND MORAL BLINDNESS. 

9. The apathy which cannot perceive beauty is very different 
from the stern energy which disdains it; and the coldness of heart 
■which receives no emotion from external nature, is not to be con- 
founded with the wisdom of purpose which represses emotion in 
action. In the case of most men, it is neither acuteness of the 
reason, nor breadth of humanity, which shields them from the 
impressions of natural scenery, but rather low anxieties, vain dis- 
contents, and mean pleasures; and for one who is blind to the 
works of God by profound abstraction or lofty purpose, tens of thou- 
sands have their eyes sealed by vulgar selfishness, and their intel- 
ligence crushed by impious care. — Pt. IV, Ch. 17, 



RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN ART 123 

SANCTITY IN" NATURE. 

19. Although there was no definite religions sentiment mingled 
■with it, there was a continual perception of Sanctity in the whole 
of nature, from the slightest thing to the vastest; — an instinctive 
awe, mixed with delight; an indefinable thrill, such as we some- 
times imagine to indicate the presence of a disembodied spirit. I 
could only feel this perfectly when I was alone; and then it would 
often make me shiver from head to foot with the joy and fear of it, 
when after being some time away from the hills, I first got to 
the shore of a mountain river, where the brown water circled 
among the pebbles, or when I saw the first swell of distant land 
against the sunset, or the first low broken wall, covered with moun- 
tain moss. I cannot in the least describe the feeling; but I do 
not think this is my fault, nor that of the English language, for, 
I am afraid, no feeling is describable. If we had to explain even 
the sense of bodily hunger to a person who had never felt it, we 
should be hard put to it for words; and this joy in nature seemed 
to me to come of a sort of heart-hunger, satisfied with the pres- 
ence of a Great and Holy Spirit. These feelings remained in 
their full intensity till I was eighteen or twenty, and then, as the 
reflective and practical power increased, and the "cares of this 
world" gained upon me, faded gradually away, in the manner de- 
scribed by Wordsworth in his Intimations of Immortality. — Pt. 
IV, Ch. 17. 

PRACTICAL TEACHING OF SCEIPTUEE. 

33. The greater number of the words which are recorded in 
Scripture, as directly spoken to men by the lips of the Deity, are 
cither simple revelations of His law, or special threatenings, com- 
mands, and promises relating to special events. But two passages 
of God's speaking, one in the Old and one in the New Testament, 
possess, it seems to me, a different character from any of the rest, 
having been uttered, the one to effect the last necessary change in 
the mind of a man whose piety was in other respects perfect; and 
the other, as the first statement to all men of the principles of 
Christianity by Christ Himself — I mean the 38th to 41st chapters 
of the book of Job and the Sermon on the Mount. Now the first 
of these passages is, from beginning to end, nothing else than a 
direction of the mind which was to be perfected to humble ob- 
servance of the works of God in nature. And the other consists 
only in the inculcation of three things: 1st, right conduct; 2nd, 
looking for eternal life; 3rd, trusting God, through watchfulness 
of his dealings with His creation: and the entire contents of the 
book of Job, and of the Sermon on the Mount, will be found re- 
solvable simply into these three requirements from all men, — that 
they should act rightly, hope for heaven, and watch God's won- 
ders and work in the earth ; the right conduct being always summed 



^124 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

up under the three heads of justice, mercy, and truth, and no men- 
tion of any doctrinal point whatsoever occurring in either piece of 
divine teaching. 

SIMPLEST TRUTHS NEGLECTED, 

34. As far as I can judge of the ways of men, it seems to me 
that the simplest and most necessary truths are always the last 
believed; and I suppose that well-meaning people in general would 
rather regulate their conduct and creed by almost any other por- 
tion of Scripture whatsoever, than by that Sermon on the Mount, 
which contains the things that Christ thought it first necessary 
for all men to understand. Nevertheless, I believe the time will 
soon come for the full force of these two passages of Scripture to be 
accepted. Instead of supposing the love of nature necessarily con- 
nected with the faithlessness of the age, I believe it is connected 
properly with the benevolence and liberty of the age; that it is 
precisely the most healthy element which distinctively belongs to 
us; and that out of it, cultivated no longer in levity or ignorance, 
but in earnestness and as a duty, results will spring of an im- 
portance at present inconceivable; and lights arise, which, for the 
first time in man's history, will reveal to him the true nature of 
his life, the true field for his energies, and the true relations be- 
tween him and his Maker. 

BEST THINGS FREE. 

35. There are two classes of precious things in the world: those 
that God gives us for nothing — sun, air, and life (both mortal life 
and immortal) ; and the secondarily precious things which he gives 
us for a price: these secondarily precious things, worldly wine and 
milk, can only be bought for definite money; they never can be 
cheapened. No cheating or bargaining will ever get a single thing 
out of nature's "establishment" at half-price. Do we want to be 
strong? — we must work. To be hungry? — we must starve. To be 
happy? — we must be kind. To be wise? — we must look and think. 
No changing of place at a hundred miles an hour, nor making of 
stuffs a thousand yards a minute, will make us one whit stronger, 
happier, or wiser. There was always more in the world than men 
could see, walked they ever so slowly; they will see it no better 
for going fast. And they will at last, and soon, too, find out that 
their grand inventions for conquering (as they think) space and 
time, do, in reality, conquer nothing; for space and time are, in 
their own essence, unconquerable, and besides did not want any 
sort of conquering; they wanted using. A fool always wants to 
shorten space and time: a wise man wants to lengthen both. A 
fool wants to kill space and kill time: a wise man, first to gain, 
them, then to animate them. — Pt. IV, Ch. 17. 



RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN ART 125 

THE BOOK OP JOB AND THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 

40. The whole language, both of the book of Job and the Ser- 
mon on the Mount, gives precisely the view of nature which is taken 
by the uninvestigating affection of a humble, but powerful mind. 
There is no dissection of muscles or counting of elements, but the 
boldest and broadest glance at the apparent facts, and the most mag- 
nificent metaphor in expressing them. 'His eyes are like the eyelids 
of the morning. In his neck remaineth strength, and sorrow is 
turned into joy before him." And in the often repeated, never 
obeyed, command, "Consider the lilies of the field," observe there 
is precisely the delicate attribution of life which we have seen to 
be the characteristic of the modern view of landscape, — "They toil 
not." There is no science, or hint of science; no counting of 
petals, nor display of provisions for sustenance: nothing but the 
expression of sympathy, at once the most childish, and the most 
profound,— "They toif not."— Pi. IV, Ch. 17. 

NATURE SPEAKS TO THE NOBLE LIFE. 

41. When the active life is nobly fulfilled, and the mind is 
then raised beyond it into clear and calm beholding of the world 
around us, the simplest forms of nature are strangely animated by 
the sense of the Divine presence; the trees and flowers seem all, in 
a sort, children of God ; and we ourselves, their fellows, made out of 
the same dust, and greater than they only in having a greater 
portion of the Divine power exerted on our frame, and all the 
common uses and palpably visible forms of things, become subor- 
dinate in our minds to their inner glory, — to the mysterious voices 
in which they talk to us about God, and the changeful and typical 
aspects by which they witness to us of holy truth, and fill us with 
obedient, joyful, and thankful emotion. — Pt. IV, Ch. 17. 

CAUSES OF WAR. 

32. Wherever there is war, there must be injustice on one side 
or the other, or on both. There have been wars which were little 
more than trials of strength between friendly nations, and in which 
the injustice was not to each other, but to the God who gave them 
life. But in a malignant war of these present ages there is injus- 
tice of ignobler kind, at once to God and man, which must be 
stemmed for both their sakes. It may, indeed, be so involved with 
national prejudices, or ignorances, that neither of the contending 
nations can conceive it as attaching to their cause; nay, the con- 
stitution of their governments, and the clumsy crookedness of their 
political dealings with each other, may be such as to prevent either 
of them from knowing the actual cause for which they have gone 
to war.— Pi. IV, Ch. 18. 



126 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

GERMAN PHILOSOPHY NOT NECESSARY TO CHRISTIAN TRUTH. , 

It is also often declared necessary to study the German controver- 
sialists, because the grounds of religion "must be inquired into." I 
am sorry to hear they have not been inquired into yet; but if it be 
so, there are two ways of pursuing that inquiry: one for scholarly 
men, who have leisure on their hands, by reading all that they 
have time to read, for and against, and arming themselves at all 
points for controversy with all persons; the other, — a shorter and 
simpler way, — for busy and practical men, who want merely to 
find out how to live and die. Now for the learned and leisurely 
men I am not writing; they know what and how to read better 
than I can tell them. For simple and busy men, concerned much 
with art, which is eminently a practical matter, and fatigues the 
eyes, so as to render much reading inexpedient, I am writing; and 
such men I do, to the utmost of my power, dissuade from meddling 
with German books; not because I fear inquiry into the grounds of 
religion, but because the only inquiry which is possible to them 
must be conducted in a totally different way. They have been 
brought up as Christians, and doubt if they should remain Chris- 
tians. They cannot ascertain, by investigation, if the Bible be true ; 
but if it be, and Christ ever existed, and was God, then, certainly, 
the Sermon which He has permitted for 1800 years to stand re- 
corded as first of all His own teaching in the New Testament, must 
be true. Let them take that Sermon and give it fair practical 
trial: act out every verse of it, with no quibbling or explaining 
away, except the reduction of such evidently metaphorical expres- 
sions as "cut off thy foot," "pluck the beam out of thine eye," to 
their effectively practical sense. Let them act out, or obey, every 
verse literally for a whole year, so far as they can, — a year being 
little enough time to give to an inquiry into religion; and if, at 
the end of the year, they are not satisfied, and still need to prose- 
cute the inquiry, let them try the German system if they choose. 
— Appendix II, German Philosophy. 



IV 

MODERN PAINTERS. 
Vol. IV (1856.) 

Part V. Of Mountain Beauty — 20 Chaps. 

From the view-point of this work of psychological inquiry and 
selection the fourth volume of Modern Painters is the greatest of 
them all. It is a product of the same ten years of labor as the third 
volume, and was issued only three months later, viz. : March, 1856. 
It is illustrated with no less than 34 plates and 116 figures. 

''Mountain Beauty," the general subject of the volume, lends 
itself easily, in the hands of Ruskin, to a series of chapters on the 
Creation which are of superb beauty and of rare value to all teachers 
of moral and religious truths. We find it necessary to our pur- 
pose to give almost the whole of the chapter on "The Firmament" 
and "The Dry Land," and the concluding portions of "The Moun- 
tain Glory," only dividing them with side-headings according to the 
general plan of this work. 

SANCTITY OP COLOR IN THE SCRIPTURES. 

24. The ascertainment of the sanctity of color is not left to human 
sagacity. It is distinctly stated in Scripture. I have before alluded 
to the sacred chord of color (blue, purple, and scarlet, with white 
and gold) as appointed in the Tabernacle; this chord is the fixed 
base of all coloring with the workmen of every great age; . . . 
In this chord the scarlet is the powerful color, and is on the whole 
the most perfect representation of abstract color which exists; blue 
being in a certain degree associated with shade, yellow with light, 
and scarlet, as absolute color, standing alone. Accordingly, we find 
it used, together with cedar wood, hyssop, and running water, as 
an emblem of purification, in Leviticus xiv. 4, and other places, 
and so used not merely as the representative of the color of blood, 
since it was also to be dipped in the actual blood of a living bird. 
So that the cedar wood for its perfume, the hyssop for its search- 
ingness, the water for its cleansing, and the scarlet for its kindling 
or enlightening, are all used as tokens of sanctification ;^ and it can- 

1 The redeemed Rahab bound for a sign a scarlet thread in the window. Com- 
pare Canticles iv. 3. 

127 



128 THE RELIGION OF RVSKIN 

not be with any force alleged, in opposition to this definite appoint- 
ment, that scarlet is used incidentally to illustrate the stain of sin, 
"though thy sins be as scarlet," any more than it could be received 
as a diminution of the authority for using snow-whiteness as a 
type of purity, that Gehazi's leprosy is described as being as "white 
as snow." An incidental image has no authoritative meaning, but 
a stated ceremonial appointment has: besides, we have the reversed 
image given distinctly in Prov. xxxi. : "She is not afraid of the snow 
for her household, for all her household are clothed with scarlet." 
And, again: "Ye daughters of Israel, weep over Saul, who clothed 
you in scarlet, with other delights." So, also, the arraying of the 
mystic Babylon in purple and scarlet may be interpreted exactly 
as we choose: either, by those who think color sensual, as an image 
of earthly pomp and guilt, or, by those who think it sacred, as an 
image of assumed or pretended sanctity. It is possible the two 
meanings may be blended, and the idea may be that the purple and 
fine linen of Dives are worn in hypocritical semblance of the pur- 
ple and fine linen of the high priest, being, nevertheless, themselves, 
in all cases typical of all beauty and purity. — Pt. V, Gh. 3. 

THE FIRMAMENT THE GENESIS ACCOUNT. 

2. The account given of the stages of Creation in the first chapter 
of Genesis, is in every respect clear and intelligible to the simplest 
reader, except in the statement of the work of the second day. I 
suppose that this statement is passed over by careless readers with- 
out an endeavor to understand it ; and contemplated by simple and 
faithful readers as a sublime mystery, which was not intended 
to be understood. But there is no mystery in any other part of 
the chapter, and it seems to me unjust to conclude that any was 
intended here. 

And the passage ought to be peculiarly interesting to us as being 
the first in the Bible in which the heavens are named, and the only 
one in which the word "Heaven," all important as that word is to 
our understanding of the most precious promises of Scripture, re- 
ceives a definite explanation. 

3. In the first place, the English word "Firmament" itself is 
obscure and useless ; because we never employ it but as a synonym of 
heaven ; it conveys no other distinct idea to us ; and the verse, though 
from our familiarity with it we imagine that it possesses meaning, 
has in reality no more point or value than if it were written, "God 
said, let there be a something in the midst of the waters, and God 
called the something Heaven." 

But the marginal reading, "Expansion," has definite value; and 
the statement that "God said, let there be an expansion in the midst 
of the waters, and God called the expansion Heaven," has an appre- 
hensible meaning. 



RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN ART 129 

4. Accepting this expression as the one intended, we have next 
to ask what expansion there is, between two waters, describable by 
the term Heaven, Milton adopts the term ''expanse;'" but he 
understands it of the whole volume of the air which surrounds the 
earth. Whereas, so far as we can tell, there is no water beyond the 
air, in the fields of space; and the whole expression of division of 
waters from waters is thus rendered valueless. — Pt. V, Ch. 6. 

GOD IN THE CLOUDS. 

5. Now, with respect to this whole chapter, we must remember 
always that it is intended for the instruction of all mankind, not 
for the learned reader only; and that, therefore, the most simple 
and natural interpretation is the likeliest in general to be the true 
one. An unscientific reader knows little about the manner in which 
the volume of the atmosphere surrounds the earth; but I imagine 
that he could hardly glance at the sky when rain was falling in the 
distance, and see the level line of the bases of the clouds from which 
the shower descended, without being able to attach an instant and 
easy meaning to the words, "Expansion in the midst of the waters." 
And if, having once seized this idea, he proceeded to examine it 
more accurately, he would perceive at once, if he had ever noticed 
anything of the nature of clouds, that the level line of their bases 
did indeed most severely and stringently divide "waters from 
waters," that is to say, divide water in its collective and tangible 
state, from water in its divided and aerial state ; or the waters which 
fall and flow, from those which rise and float. Next, if we try this 
interpretation in the theological sense of the word Heaven, and 
examine whether the clouds are spoken of as God's dwelling-place, 
we find God going before the Israelites in a pillar of cloud; reveal- 
ing Himself in a cloud on Sinai ; appearing in a cloud on the mercy- 
seat; filling the Temple of Solomon with the cloud when its dedica- 
tion is accepted; appearing in a great cloud to Ezekiel; ascending 
into a cloud before the eyes of the disciples on Mount Olivet ; and in 
like manner returning to Judgment. "Behold, he cometh with 
clouds, and every eye shall see him." "Then shall they see the son 
of man coming in the clouds of heaven, with power and great 
glory. "^ While farther, the "clouds" and "heavens" are used as 
interchangeable words in those Psalms which most distinctly set 

1 "God made 

The firmament, expanse of liquid, pure, 

Transparent, elemental air, diffused 

In circuit to the uttermost convex 

Of this great round." — "Paradise Lost" book vii. 

2 The reader may refer to the following texts, which it is needless to quote:" 
Exod. xiii. 21, xvi. 10, xix. 9, xxiv. 16, xxxiv. 5, Levit. xvi. 2, Num. x. 34, 
Judges V. 4, 1 Kings viii. 10, Ezek. i. 4, Dan. vii. 13, Matt. xxiv. 30, 1 Thess. 
iv. 17, Rev. i. 7. 



130 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

forth the power of God: "He bowed the heavens also, and came 
down; he made darkness pavilions round about him, dark waters, 
and thick clouds of the skies." And, again : "Thy mercy. Oh Lord, 
is in the heavens, and thy faithfulness reacheth unto the clouds." 
And, again: "His excellency is over Israel, and his strength is in 
the clouds." Again: "The clouds poured out water, the skies sent 
out a sound, the voice of thy thunder w^as in the heaven." Again : 
"Clouds and darkness are round about him, righteousness and judg- 
ment are the habitation of his throne ; the heavens declare his right- 
eousness, and all the people see his glory." 

HE "bowed the heavens.'' 

6. In all these passages the meaning is unmistakable, if they 
possess definite meaning at all. We are too apt to take them merely 
for sublime and vague imagery, and therefore gradually to lose the 
apprehension of their life and power. The expression, "He bowed 
the Heavens," for instance, is, I suppose, received by most readers 
as a magnificent hyperbole, having reference to some peculiar and 
fearful manifestation of God's power to the writer of the Psalm 
in which the words occur. But the expression either has plain mean- 
ing, or it has no meaning. Understand by the term "Heaven" the 
compass of infinite space around the earth, and the expression, 
"bowed the Heavens," however sublime, is wholly without meaning; 
infinite space cannot be bent or bowed. But understand by the 
"Heavens" the veil of clouds above the earth, and the expression is 
neither hyperbolical nor obscure; it is pure, plain, and accurate 
truth, and it describes God, not as revealing Himself in any peculiar 
way to David, but doing what he is still doing before our own eyes 
day by day. By accepting the words in their simple sense, we are 
thus led to apprehend the immediate presence of the Deity, and His 
purpose of manifesting Himself as near us whenever the storm- 
cloud stoops upon its course; while by our vague and inaccurate 
acceptance of the words we remove the idea of His presence far 
from us, into a region which we can neither see nor know; and 
gradually, from the close realization of a living God who "maketh 
the clouds his chariot," we refine and explain ourselves into dim 
and distant suspicion of an inactive God, inhabiting inconceivable 
places, and fading into the multitudinous formalisms of the laws of 
Nature. 

BY SEARCHING WE CANNOT FIND OUT GOD. 

7. All errors of this kind arise from the originally mistaken idea 
that man can, "by searching, find out God — find out the Almighty to 
perfection ;" that is to say, by help of courses of reasoning and ac- 
cumulations of science, apprehend the nature of the Deity in a 
more exalted and more accurate manner than in a state of compara- 
tive ignorance ; whereas it is clearly necessary, from the beginning to 
the end of time, that God's way of revealing Himself to His cresr 



RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN ART 131 

tures should be a simple way, which all those creatures may under- 
stand. Whether taught or untaught, whether of mean capacity or 
enlarged, it is necessary that communion with their Creator should 
be possible to all; and the admission to such communion must be 
rested, not on their having a knowledge of astronomy, but on their 
having a human soul. In order to render this communion possi- 
ble, the Deity has stooped from His throne, and has not only, in the 
person of the Son, taken upon Him the veil of our human flesh, 
but, in the person of the Father, taken upon Him the veil of our 
human thoughts, and permitted us, by His own spoken authority, to 
conceive Him simply and clearly as a loving Father and Friend ; — a 
being to be walked with and reasoned with ; to be moved by our en- 
treaties, angered by our rebellion, alienated by our coldness, pleased 
by our love, and glorified by our labor; and, finally to be beheld in 
immediate and active presence in all the powers and changes of 
creation. This conception of God, which is the child's, is evidently 
the only one which can be universal, and therefore the only one 
which for us can be true. The moment that, in our pride of heart, 
we refuse to accept the condescension of the Almighty, and desire 
Him, instead of stooping to hold our hands, to rise up before us into 
His glory, — we hoping that by standing on a grain of dust or two 
of human knowledge higher than our fellows, we may behold the 
Creator as He rises, — God takes us at our word; He rises, into His 
own invisible and inconceivable majesty; He goes forth upon the 
ways which are not our ways, and retires into the thoughts which 
are not our thoughts ; and we are left alone. And presently we say 
in our vain hearts, "There is no God." 

god's own account of creation. 
8. I would desire, therefore, to receive God's account of His 
own creation as under the ordinary limits of human knowledge and 
imagination it would be received by a simply minded man ; and find- 
ing that the "heavens and the earth" are spoken of always as having 
something like equal relation to each other ("thus the heavens and 
the earth were finished, and all the host of them"), I reject at once 
all idea of the term "Heavens" being intended to signify the infinity 
of space inhabited by countless worlds; for between those infinite 
heavens and the particle of sand, which not the earth only, but the 
sun itself, with all the solar system, is in relation to them, no rela- 
tion of equality or comparison could be inferred. But I suppose 
the heavens to mean that part of creation which holds equal com- 
panionship with our globe; I understand the "rolling of those 
heavens together as a scroll" to be an equal and relative destruction 
with the "melting of the elements in fervent heat;"' and I under- 

1 Compare also Job xxxv'i. 29, "The spreading of the clouds, and the noise of 
his tabernacle;" and xxxviii. 33, "Knowest thou the ordinances of heaven? canst 
thou set the dominion thereof in the earth? canst thou lift up thy voice to the 
clouds?" 



132 JHE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

stand the making the firmament to signify that, so far as man is 
concerned, most magnificent ordinance of the clouds ; — the ordinance 
that as the great plain of waters was formed on the face of the earth, 
so also a plain of waters should be stretched along the height of air, 
and the face of the cloud answer the face of the ocean ; and that this 
upper and heavenly plain should be of waters, as it were, glorified in 
their nature, no longer quenching the fire, but now bearing fire in 
their own bosoms ; no longer murmuring only when the winds raise 
them or rocks divide, but answering each other with their own voices 
from pole to pole; no longer restrained by established shores, and 
guided through unchanging channels, but going forth at their pleas- 
ure like the armies of the angels, and choosing their encampments 
upon the heights of the hills ; no longer hurried downwards forever, 
moving but to fall, nor lost in lightless accumulation of the abyss, 
but covering the east and west with the waving of their wings, and 
robing the gloom of the farther infinite with a vesture of divers 
colors, of which the threads are purple and scarlet, and the em- 
broideries flame. 



GOD REVEALS HIMSELF IN THE HEAVENS. 

9. This, I believe, is the ordinance of the firmament ; and it seems 
to me that in the midst of the material nearness of these heavens 
God means us to acknowledge His own immediate presence as visit- 
ing, judging, and blessing us. "The earth shook, the heavens also 
dropped, at the presence of God." "He doth set His bow in the 
cloud," and thus renews, in the sound of every drooping swathe of 
rain, his promises of everlasting love. "In them hath he set a taber- 
nacle for the "sun ;" whose burning ball, which without the firma- 
ment would be seen as an intolerable and scorching circle in the 
blackness of vacuity, is by that firmament surrounded with gorgeous 
service, and tempered by mediatorial ministries; by the firmament 
of clouds the golden pavement is spread for his chariot wheels at 
morning; by the firmament of clouds the temple is built for his 
presence to fill with light at noon ; by the firmament of clouds the 
purple veil is closed at evening round the sanctuary of his rest ; by 
the mists of the firmament his implacable light is divided, and its 
separated fierceness appeared into the soft blue that fills the depth of 
distance with its bloom, and the flush with which the mountains burn 
as they drink the overflowing of the dayspring. And in this taber- 
nacling of the unendurable sun with men, through the shadows of 
the firmament, God would seem to set forth the stooping of His 
own majesty to men, upon the throne of the firmament. As the 
Creator of all the worlds, and the Inhabiter of eternity, we cannot 
behold Him ; but, as the Judge of the earth and the Preserver of men, 
those heavens are indeed His dwelling-place. "Swear not, neither 
by heaven, for it is God's throne; nor by the earth, for it is his 



RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN ART (133 

footstool." And all those passings to and fro of fruitful shower and 
grateful shade, and all those visions of silver palaces built about 
the horizon, and voices of moaning winds and threatening thunders, 
and glories of colored robe and cloven ray, are but to deepen in our 
hearts the acceptance, and distinctness, and dearness of the simple 
words, "Our Father which art in heaven." — Pt. V, Ch. 6. 

GENESIS ACCOUNT OP THE DRY LAND. 

1, The words which marked for us the purpose of the clouds are 
followed immediately by those notable ones: "And God said. Let 
the waters which are under the heaven be gathered together unto one 
place, and let the dry land appear." 

We do not, perhaps, often enough consider the deep significance 
of this sentence. We are too apt to receive it as the description of 
an event vaster only in its extent, not in its nature, than the com- 
pelling the Red Sea to draw back, that Israel might pass by. We im- 
agine the Deity in like manner rolling the waves of the greater 
ocean together on a heap, and setting bars and doors to them eter- 
nally. 

But there is a far deeper meaning than this in the solemn words 
of Genesis, and in the correspondent verse of the Psalm, "His hands 
prepared the dry land." Up to that moment the earth had been 
void, for it had been ivithout form. The command that the waters 
should be gathered was the command that the earth should be 
sculptured. The sea was not driven to his place in suddenly re- 
strained rebellion, but withdrawn to his place in perfect and patient 
obedience. The dry land appeared, not in level sands, forsaken 
by the surges, which those surges might again claim for their own ; 
but in range beyond range of swelling hill and iron rock, forever to 
claim kindred with the firmament, and be companioned by the 
clouds of heaven. 

THE "day'' of genesis. 

2. What space of time was in reality occupied by the "day" of 
Genesis, is not at present, of any importance for us to consider. By 
what furnaces of fire the adamant was melted, and by what wheels 
of earthquake it was torn, and by what teeth of glacier and weight 
of sea-waves it was engraven and finished into its perfect form, we 
may perhaps hereafter endeavor to conjecture; but here, as in few 
words the work is summed by the historian, so in few broad thoughts 
it should be comprehended by us; and as we read the mighty sen- 
tence, "Let the dry land appear," we should try to follow the finger 
of God, as it engraved upon the stone tables of the earth the letters 
and the law of its everlasting form; as gulf by gulf, the channels of 
the deep were ploughed; and cape by cape, the lines were traced, with 
Divine foreknowledge, of the shores that were to limit the nations; 
'and chain by chain, the mountain walls were lengthened forth, and 



134 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

their foundations fastened forever; and the compass was set upon 
the face of the depth, and the fields, and the highest part of the dust 
of the world were made ; and the right hand of Christ first strewed 
the snow of Lebanon, and smoothed the slopes of Calvary. 

THE WISDOM AND LOVE OF CREATION. 

3. It is not, I repeat, always needful, in many respects it is not 
possible, to conjecture the manner, or the time, in which this work 
,was done; but it is deeply necessary for all men to consider the 
magnificence of the accomplished purpose, and the depth of the wis- 
dom and love which are manifested in the ordinances of the hills. 
For observe, in order to bring the world into the form which it now 
bears, it was not mere sculpture that was needed ; the mountains could 
not stand for a day unless they were formed of materials altogether 
different from those which constitute the lower hills, and the sur- 
faces of the valleys. A harder substance had to be prepared for 
every mountain chain ; yet not so hard but that it might be capable 
of crumbling down into earth fit to nourish the alpine forest and the 
alpine flower; not so hard but that, in the midst of the utmost majes- 
ty of its enthroned strength, there should be seen on it the seal of 
death, and the writing of the same sentence that had gone forth 
against the human frame, "Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt 
return." And with this perishable substance the most majestic forma 
were to be framed that were consistent with the safety of man ; and 
the peak was to be lifted, and the cliff rent, as high and as steeply as 
was possible, in order yet to permit the shepherd to feed his flocks 
upon the slope, and the cottage to nestle beneath their shadow. 

god's PROVISION IN THE MOUNTAINS. 

4. And observe, two distinct ends were to be accomplished in the 
doing this. It was, indeed, absolutely necessary that such eminences 
should be created, in order to fit the earth in any wise for human 
habitation ; for without mountains the air could not be purified, nor 
the flowing of the rivers sustained, and the earth must have become 
for the most part desert plain, or stagnant marsh. But the feeding of 
the rivers and the purifying of the winds are the least of the services 
appointed to the hills. To fill the thirst of the human heart for the 
beauty of God's working, — to startle its lethargy with the deep and 
pure agitation of astonishment, — are their higher missions. They 
are as a great and noble architecture ; first giving shelter, comfort, 
and rest ; and covered also with mighty sculpture and painted legend. 

MOUNTAINS GIVE MOTION TO WATER. 

5. Deep calleth unto deep. I know not which of the two is the 
more wonderful, — that calm, gradated, invisible slope of the cham- 
paign land, which gives motion to the stream ; or that passage cloven 



RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN ART 135 

for it through the ranks of hill, which, necessary for the health of 
the land immediately around them, would yet, unless so super- 
naturally divided, have fatally intercepted the flow of the waters from 
far-off countries. When did the great spirit of the river first knock 
at those adamantine gates? When did the porter open to it, and 
cast his keys away forever, lapped in whirling sand? I am not 
satisfied — no one should be satisfied — with that vague answer, — the 
river cuts its way. Not so. The river found its way, I do not see that 
rivers, in their own strength, can do much in cutting their way; 
they are nearly as apt to choke their channels up, as to carve them' 
out. Only give a river some little sudden power in a valley, and 
eee how it will use it. Cut itself a bed? Not so, by any means, but 
fill up its bed, and look for another, in a wild, dissatisfied, incon- 
sistent manner. Any way, rather than the old one, will better please 
it ; and even if it is banked up and forced to keep to the old one, it 
will not deepen, but do all it can to raise it, and leap out of it. And 
although, wherever water has a steep fall, it will swiftly cut itself 
a bed deep into the rock or ground, it will not, when the rock is 
hard, cut a wider channel than it actually needs ; so that if the exist- 
ing river beds, through ranges of mountain, had in reality been cut 
by the streams, they would be found, wherever the rocks are hard, 
only in the form of narrow and profound ravines, — like the well- 
known channel of the Niagara, below the fall ; not in that of extended 
valleys. And the actual work of true mountain rivers, though often 
much greater in proportion to their body of water than that of the 
Niagara, is quite insignificant when compared with the area and 
depth of the valleys through which they flow; so that, although in 
many cases it appears that those larger valleys have been excavated at 
earlier periods by more powerful streams, or by the existing stream 
in a more powerful condition, still the great fact remains always 
equally plain, and equally admirable, that, whatever the nature and 
duration of the agencies employed, the earth was so shaped at first as 
to direct the currents of its rivers in the manner most healthy and 
convenient for man. The valley of the Rhone may, though it is not 
likely, have been in great part excavated in early time by torrents 
a thousand times larger than the Rhone ; but it could not have been 
excavated at all, unless the mountains had been thrown at first into 
two chains, between which the torrents were set to work in a given 
direction. And it is easy to conceive how, under any less beneficent 
dispositions of their masses of hill, the continents of the earth might 
either have been covered with enormous lakes, as parts of North 
America actually are covered ; or have become wildernesses of pestif- 
erous marsh; or lifeless plains, upon which the water would have 
dried as it fell, leaving them for great part of the year desert. Such 
districts do exist, and exist invastness: the whole earth is not prepared 
for the habitation of man ; only certain small portions are prepared 
for him, — the houses, as it were, of the human race, from which they 



136 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

are to look abroad upon the rest of the world, not to wonder or com- 
plain that it is not all house, but to be grateful for the kindness of the 
admirable building, in the house itself, as compared with the rest. 
It would be as absurd to think it an evil that all the world is not fit 
for us to inhabit, as to think it an evil that the globe is no larger 
than it is. As much as we shall ever need is evidently assigned to 
us for our dwelling-place; the rest, covered with rolling waves or 
drifting sands, fretted with ice, or crested with fire, is set before us 
for contemplation in an uninhabitable magnificence; and that part 
which we are enabled to inhabit owes its fitness for human life chiefly 
to its mountain ranges, which, throwing the superfluous rain off as 
it falls, collect it in streams or lakes, and guide it into given places, 
and in given directions; so that men can build their cities in the 
midst of fields which they know will be always fertile, and establish 
the lines of their commerce upon streams which will not fail. 

OTHER MINISTRIES OF MOUNTAINS. 

8. The second great use of mountains is to maintain a constant 
change in the currents and nature of the air. 

9. The third great use of mountains is to cause perpetual change 
in the soils of the earth. Without such provisions the ground under 
cultivation would in a series of years become exhausted and require 
to be upturned laboriously by the hand of man. But the elevations 
of the earth's surface provide for it a perpetual renovation. The 
higher mountains suffer their summits to be broken into fragments 
and to be cast down in sheets of massy rock, full, as we shall see 
presently, of every substance necessary for the nourishment of plants: 
these fallen fragments are again broken by frost, and ground by 
torrents, into various conditions of sand and clay — materials which 
are distributed perpetually by the streams farther and farther from 
the mountain's base. 

10. The three great functions — ^those of giving motion and change 
to water, air, and earth, — are indispensable to human existence; they 
are operations to be regarded with as full a depth of gratitude as the 
laws which bid the tree bear fruit, or the seed multiply itself in the 
earth. And thus those desolate and threatening rangesof dark moun- 
tain, which, in nearly all ages of the world, men have looked upon 
with aversion or with terror, and shrunk back from as if they were 
haunted by perpetual images of death, are, in reality, sources of life 
and happiness far fuller and more beneficent than all the bright 
fruitfulness of the plain. The valleys only feed ; the mountains feed, 
and guard, and strengthen us. We take our idea of fearfulness and 
sublimity alternately from the mountains and the sea ; but we^ asso- 
ciate them unjustly. The sea wave, with all its beneficence, is yet 
devouring and terrible ; but the silent wave of ihe blue mountain i* 



RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN ART 137 

lifted toward heaven in a stillness of perpetual mercy; and the one 
surge, unfathomable in its darkness, the other, unshaken in its faith- 
fulness, forever bear the seal of their appointed symbol : 

"Thy righteousness is like the great mountains: 
Thy judgments are a great deep." 

—PL V, Ch. 7, 

"WASTE AND DECAY AS DIVINE INSTRUMENTS. 

12. In the hand of the great Architect of the mountains, time and 
decay are as much the instruments of His purpose as the forces 
by which He first led forth the troops of hills in leaping flocks: — 
the lightning and the torrent and the wasting and weariness of innu- 
merable ages, all bear their part in the working out of one consistent 
plan ; and the Builder of the temple forever stands beside His work, 
appointing the stone that is to fall, and the pillar that is to be 
abased, and guiding all the seeming wildness of chance and change, 
into ordained splendors and foreseen harmonies. 

THE MOUNTAIN ALPS AND THE CREATOR. 

13. I can hardly conceive any one standing face to face with one 
of these towers of central rock, and yet not also asking himself, Is 
this indeed the actual first work of the Divine Master on which I 
gaze? Was the great precipice shaped by His finger, as Adam was 
shaped out of the dust? Were its clefts and ledges carved upon it 
by its Creator, as the letters were on the Tables of the Law, and was 
it thus left to bear its eternal testimony to His beneficence among 
these clouds of heaven? Or is it the descendant of a long race of 
mountains, existing under appointed laws of birth and endurance, 
death and decrepitude? 

14. There can be no doubt as to the answer. The rock itself 
answers audibly by the murmur of some falling stone or rending 
pinnacle. It is not as it was once. Those waste leagues around its 
feet are loaded with the wrecks of what it was. On these, perhaps, of 
all mountains, the characters of decay are written most clearly; 
around these are spread most gloomily the memorials of their pride, 
and the signs of their humiliation. 

"What then were they once?" 
The only answer is yet again, — "Behold the cloud." 
Their form, as far as human vision can trace it, is one of eternal 
decay. No retrospection can raise them out of their ruins, or with- 
draw them beyond the law of their perpetual fate. Existing science 
may be challenged to form, with the faintest color of probability, any 
conception of the original aspect of a crystalline mountain; it can- 
not be followed in its elevation, or traced in its connection with its 
fellows. No eyes ever "saw its substance, yet being imperfect;" its 
history is a monotone of endurance and destruction ; all that we can. 



138 THE RELIGION OF RUSK IN 

certainly know of it, is that it was once greater than it is now, and 
it only gathers vastness, and still gathers, as it fades into the abyss of 
the unknown.— P^. V, Ch. 13. 

A CRUMB OP MICA AS THE AXE OF GOD. 

17. Is not this a strange type, in the very heart and height of these 
mysterious Alps — these wrinkled hills in their snowy, cold, gray- 
haired old age, at first so silent, then, as we keep quiet at their feet, 
muttering and whispering to us garrulously, in broken and dream- 
ing fits, as it were, about their childhood — is it not a strange type of 
the things which "out of weakness are made strong?" If one of 
those little flakes of mica-sand, hurried intremulous spangling^ 
along the bottom of the ancient river, too light to sink, too faint to 
float, almost too small for sight, could have had a mind given to it as 
it was at last borne down with its kindred dust into the abysses of 
the stream, and laid, (would it not have thought?) for a hopeless 
eternity, in the dark ooze, the most despised, forgotten, and feeble of 
all earth's atoms ; incapable of any use or change ; not fit, down there 
in the diluvial darkness, so much as to help an earth-wasp to build 
its nest, or feed the first fibre of a lichen; — what would it have 
thought, had it been told that one day, knitted into a strength as 
of imperishable iron, rustless by the air, infusible by the flame, out 
of the substance of it, with its fellows, the axe of God should hew that 
Alpine tower ; that against it — poor, helpless, mica flake I — the wild 
north winds should rage in vain ; beneath it — low-fallen mica flake I 
— the snowy hills should lie bowed like flocks of sheep, and the king- 
doms of the earth fade away in unregarded blue; and around it — 
weak, wave-drifted mica flake! — the .great war of the firmament 
should burst in thunder, and yet stir it not ; and the fiery arrows and 
angry meteors of the night fall blunted back from it into the air; 
-and all the stars in the clear heaven should light, one by one as they 
rose, new cressets upon the points of snow that fringed its abiding- 
place on the imperishable spire? — Pt. V, Ch. 16. 

MEN WILL SEE WHAT THEY LOOK FOR. 

4- In all things throughout the world, the men who look for the 
crooked will see the crooked, and the men who look for the straight 
will see the straight. But yet the saying was a notably sad one ; for 
it came of the conviction in the speaker's mind that there was in 
reality no crooked and no straight; that all so-oalled discernment 
was fancy, and that men might, with equal rectitude of judgment, 
and good-deserving of their fellow-men, perceive and paint whatever 
was convenient to them. 



RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN ART 139 

WE DO NOT SEE THE WHOLE OF ANYTHING. 

5. Whereas things may always be seen truly by candid people, 
though never completely. No human capacity ever yet saw the whole 
of a thing; but we may see more and more of it the longer w^e 
look. Every individual temper will see something different in it: 
but supposing the tempers honest, all the differences are there. 
Every advance in our acuteness of perception will show us something 
new; but the old and first discerned thing will still be there, not 
falsified, only modified and enriched by the new perceptions, be- 
coming continually more beautiful in its harmony with them and 
more approved as a part of the Infinite truth. 

6. There are no natural objects out of which more can be thus 
learned than out of stones. They seem to have been created espe- 
cially to reward a patient observer. Nearly all other objects in 
nature can be seen, to some extent, without patience, and are pleas- 
ant even in being half seen. Trees, clouds, and rivers are enjoyable 
even by the careless ; but the stone under his foot has for carelessness 
nothing in it but stumbling : no pleasure is languidly to be had out 
of it, nor food, nor good of any kind; nothing but symbolism of 
the hard heart and the unfatherly gift. And yet, do but give it 
some reverence and watchfulness, and there is bread of thought in 
it, more than in any other lowly feature of all the landscape. — 
PL V, Ch. 18. 

LESSONS OF THE STONES. 

26. There are two lessons to be gathered from the opposite con- 
ditions of mountain decay, of perhaps a wider range of meaning 
than any which were suggested even by the states of mountain 
strength. In the first, we find the unyielding rock, undergoing no 
sudden danger and capable of no total fall, yet, in its hardness of 
heart, worn away by perpetual trampling of torrent waves, and stress 
of wandering storm. Its fragments, fruitless and restless, are tossed 
into ever-changing heaps: no labor of man can subdue them to his 
service, nor can his utmost patience secure any dwelling-place among 
them. In this they are the type of all that humanity which, suf- 
fering under no sudden punishment or sorrow, remains ''stony 
ground," afflicted, indeed, continually by minor or vexing cares, but 
only broken by them into fruitless ruin of fatigued life. Of this 
ground not "corn-giving," — this "rough valley, neither eared nor 
soMm,"^ of the common world, it is said, to those who have set 
up their idols in the wreck of it — 

"Among the smooth stones of the stream is thy portion. They, they are thy 
lot." — Isai. Ivii. 5, 6. 

But, as we pass beneath the hills which have been shaken by 

^Deut. xxi. 4. So Amos, vi. 12: "Shall horses run upon the rock; will one 
plough here with oxen?" 



140 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

earthquake and torn by convulsion, we find that periods of perfect 
repose succeeded those of destruction. The pools of calm water lie 
clear beneath their fallen rocks, the water-lilies gleam, and the 
reeds whisper among their shadows ; the village rises again over the 
forgotten graves, and its church-tower, white through the storm- 
twilight, proclaims a renewed appeal to His protection in whose hand 
"are all the corners of the earth, and the strength of the hills is 
His also." There is no loveliness of Alpine valley that does not 
teach the same lesson. It is just where "the mountain falling cometh 
to naught, and the rock is removed out of his place," that, in process 
of years, the fairest meadows bloom between the fragments, the 
clearest rivulets murmur from their crevices among the flowers, and 
the clustered cottages, each sheltered beneath some strength of mossy 
stone, now to be removed no more, and with their pastured flocks 
around them, safe from the eagle's stoop and the wolf's ravin, have 
written upon their fronts, in simple words, the mountaineer's faith 
in the ancient promise — 

"Neither shalt thou be afraid of destruction when it cometh ; 
"For thou shalt be in league with the Stones of the Field ; and the beasts of 
the field shall be at peace with thee." 

—Pt. V, Ch. 18. 

nature's warnings and the mystery op punishment. 

32. It has always appeared to me that there was, even in more 
healthy mountain districts, a certain degree of inevitable melan- 
choly; nor could I ever escape from the feeling that here, where 
chiefly the beauty of God's working was manifested to men, warn- 
ing was also given, and that to the full, of the enduring of His 
indignation against sin. 

It seems one of the most cunning and frequent of self-deceptions 
to turn the heart away from this warning and refuse to acknowledge 
anything in the fair scenes of the natural creation but beneficence. 
Men in general lean towards the light, so far as they contemplate 
such things at all, most of them passing "by on the other side," 
either in mere plodding pursuit of their own work, irrespective of 
what good or evil is around them, or else in selfish gloom, or selfish 
delight, resulting from their own circumstances at the moment. Of 
those who give themselves to any true contemplation, the plurality, 
being humble, gentle, and kindly hearted, look only in nature for 
what is lovely and kind; partly, also, God gives the disposition to 
every healthy human mind in some degree to pass over or even 
harden itself against evil things, else the suffering would be too 
great to be borne ; and humble people, with a quiet trust that every- 
thing is for the best, do not fairly represent the facts to themselves, 
thinking them none of their business. So, what between hard- 
hearted people, thoughtless people, busy people, humble people, 



RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN ART 141 

and cheerfully minded people — giddiness of youth, and preoccu- 
pations of age — philosophies of faith, and cruelties of folly — priest 
and Levite, masquer and merchantman, all agreeing to keep their 
own side of the way — the evil that God sends to warn us gets to 
be forgotten, and the evil that He sends to be mended by us gets left 
unmended. And then, because people shut their eyes to the dark 
indisputableness of the facts in front of them, their Faith, such as 
it is, is shaken or uprooted by every darkness in what is revealed 
to them. In the present day it is not easy to find a well-meaning 
man among our more earnest thinkers, who will not take upon him- 
self to dispute the whole system of redemption, because he cannot 
unravel the mystery of the punishment of sin. But can he unravel 
the mystery of the punishment of no sin? — Pf. V, Ch. 19. 

BIBLE SIGNIFICANCE OP MOUNTAINS. 

45. It may perhaps be permitted me to mark the significance of 
the earliest mention of mountains in the Mosaic books; at least, of 
those in which some Divine appointment or command is stated 
respecting them. They are first brought before us as refuges for 
God's people from the two judgments of water and fire. The ark 
rests upon the "mountains of Ararat:" and man, having passed 
through that great baptism unto death, kneels upon the earth first 
(■where it is nearest heaven, and mingles with the mountain clouds 
the smoke of his sacrifice of thanksgiving. Again : from the midst 
of the first judgment by fire, the command of the Deity to His serv- 
ant is, "Escape to the mountain ;" and the morbid fear of the hills 
which fills any human mind after long stay in places of luxury 
and sin, is strangely marked in Lot's complaining reply: "I can- 
not escape to the mountain, lest some evil take me." The third 
mention, in way of ordinance, is a far more solemn one : "Abraham 
lifted up his eyes, and saw the place afar off." "The Place," the 
Mountain of Myrrh, or of bitterness, chosen to fulfil to all the seed 
of Abraham, far off and near, the inner meaning of promise re- 
garded in that vow : "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from 
whence cometh mine help." 

And the fourth is the delivery of the law on Sinai. 

THE DEATH OF AARON AND MOSES. 

46. It seemed, then, to the monks, that the mountains were 
appointed by their Maker to be to man, refuges from Judgment, 
signs of Redemption, and altars of Sanctification and obedience; 
and they saw them afterwards connected, in the manner the most 
touching and gracious, with the death, after his task had been accom- 
plished, of the first anointed Priest; the death, in like manner, of 
the first inspired Lawgiver; and, lastly, with the assumption of 
his office by the Eternal Priest, Lawgiver, and Saviour. 



142 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

Observe the connection of these three events. Although the 
time of the deaths of Aaron and Moses was hastened by God's dis- 
pleasure, we have not, it seems to me, the slightest warrant for con- 
cluding that the manner of their deaths was intended to be grievous 
or dishonorable to them. Far from this: it cannot, I think, be 
doubted that in the denial of the permission to enter the Promised 
Land, the whole punishment of their sin was included; and that 
as far as regarded the manner of their deaths, it must have been 
appointed for them by their Master in all tenderness and love; and 
with full purpose of ennobling the close of their service upon the 
earth. It might have seemed to us more honorable that both should 
have been permitted to die beneath the shadow of the Tabernacle, 
the congregation of Israel watching by their side ; and all whom they 
loved gathered together to receive the last message from the lips 
of the meek lawgiver, and the last blessing from the prayer of the 
anointed priest. But it was not thus they were permitted to die. 
Try to realize that going forth of Aaron from the midst of the 
congregation. He who had so often done sacrifice for their sin, 
going forth now to offer up his own spirit. He who had stood, 
among them, between the dead and the living, and had seen the 
eyes of all that great multitude turned to him, that by his inter- 
cession their breath might yet be drawn a moment more, going 
forth now to meet the Angel of Death face to face, and deliver 
himself into his hand. Try if you cannot walk, in thought, with 
those two brothers, and the son, as they passed the outmost tents 
of Israel, and turned, while yet the dew lay round about the camp, 
towards the slopes of Mount Hor; talking together for the last 
time, as step by step, they felt the steeper rising of the rocks, and 
hour after hour, beneath the ascending sun, the horizon grew 
broader as they climbed, and all the folded hills of Idumea, one 
by one subdued, showed amidst their hollows in the haze of noon, 
the windings of that long desert journey, now at last to close. But 
who shall enter into the thoughts of the High Priest, as his eyes 
followed those paths of ancient pilgrimage ; and, through the silence 
of the arid and endless hills, stretching even to the dim peak of 
Sinai, the whole history of those forty years was unfolded before 
him, and the mystery of his own ministries revealed to him; and 
that other Holy of Holies, of which the mountain peaks were the 
altars, and the mountain clouds the veil, the firmament of his Fa- 
ther's dwelling, opened to him still more brighter and infinitely as 
he drew nearer his death ; until at last, on the shadeless summit, — 
from him on whom sin was to be laid no more — from him on whose 
heart the names of sinful nations were to press their graven fire no 
longer, — the brother and the son took breastplate and ephod, and 
left him to his rest. 



RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN ART 143 

MOSES AT THE MOUNTAIN. 

47. There is indeed a secretness in this calm faith and deep 
restraint of sorrow, into which it is difficult for us to enter ; but the 
death of Moses himself is more easily to be conceived; and had 
in it circumstances still more touching, as far as regards the influ- 
ence of the external scene. For forty years Moses had not been 
alone. The care and burden of all the people, the weight of their 
woe, and guilt, and death, had been upon him continually. The 
multitude had been laid upon him as if he had conceived them; 
their tears had been his meat, night and day, until he had felt 
as if God had withdrawn His favor from him, and he had prayed 
that he might be slain, and not see his wretchedness.' And now, 
at last, the command came, "Get thee up into this mountain." 
The weary hands that had been so long stayed up against the 
enemies of Israel, might lean again upon the shepherd's staff, and 
fold themselves for the shepherd's prayer — for the shepherd's slum- 
ber. Not strange to his feet, though forty years unknown, the 
roughness of the bare mountain-path, as he climbed from ledge to 
ledge of Abarim; not strange to his aged eyes the scattered clusters 
of the mountain herbage, and the broken shadows of the cliffs, 
indented far across the silence of uninhabited ravines; scenes such 
as those among which, with none, as now, beside him but God, he 
had led his flocks so often ; and which he had left, how painfully I 
taking upon him the appointed power, to make of the fenced city 
a wilderness, and to fill the desert with songs of deliverance. It 
was not to embitter the last hours of his life that God restored to 
him, for a day, the beloved solitudes he had lost; and breathed 
the peace of the perpetual hills around him, and cast the world in 
which he had labored and sinned far beneath his feet, in that mist 
of dying blue; — all sin, all wandering, soon to be forgotten for- 
ever; the Dead Sea — a type of God's anger understood by him, 
of all men, most clearly, who had seen the earth open her mouth, 
and the sea his depth, to overwhelm the companies of those who 
contended with his Master — lay waveless beneath him; and beyond 
it, the fair hills of Judah, and the soft plains and banks of Jor- 
dan, purple in the evening light as with the blood of redemption, 
and fading in their distant fulness into mysteries of promise and of 
love. There, with his unabated strength, his undimmed glance, 
lying down upon the utmost rocks, with angels waiting near to 
contend for the spoils of his spirit, he put off his earthly armor. 
We do deep reverence to his companion prophet, for whom the 
chariot of fire came down from heaven ; but was his death less noble, 
whom his Lord Himself buried in the vales of Moab, keeping, in the 
secrets of the eternal counsels, the knowledge of a sepulchre, from 
which he was to be called, in the fulness of time to talk with that 

* Number xi. 12, 15. 



144 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

Lord, upon Hermon, of the death that He should aooomplish at 
Jerusalem? 

THE TRANSFIGURATION. 

47. And lastly, let us turn our thoughts for a few moments to the 
cause of the resurrection of these two prophets. We are all of us 
too much in the habit of passing it by, as a thing mystical and in- 
conceivable, taking place in the life of Christ for some purpose not 
by us to be understood, or, at the best, merely as a manifestation 
of His divinity of brightness of heavenly light, and the ministering 
of the spirits of the dead, intended to strengthen the faith of His 
three chosen apostles. And in this as in many other events recorded 
by the Evangelists, we lose half the meaning and evade the practi- 
cal power upon ourselves, by never accepting in its fulness the 
idea that our Lord was "perfect man" "tempted in all things like 
as we are." Our preachers are continually trying, in all manner of 
subtle ways, to explain the union of the Divinity with the Man- 
hood, an explanation which certainly involves first their being able 
to describe the nature of Deity itself, or, in plain words, to compre- 
hend God. They never can explain, in any one particular, the 
union of the natures; they only succeed in weakening the faith of 
their hearers as to the entireness of either. The thing they have 
to do is precisely the contrary of this — to insist upon the entireness 
of both. We never think of Christ enough as God, never enough as 
Man; the instinctive habit of our minds being always to miss of 
the Divinity, and the reasoning and enforced habit to miss of the 
Humanity. We are afraid to harbor in our own hearts, or to utter 
in the hearing of others, any thought of our Lord, as hungering, 
tired, sorrowful, having a human soul, a human will, and affected 
by events of human life as a finite creature is ; and yet one half of 
the efficiency of His atonement, and the whole of the efficiency of 
His example, depend on His having been this to the full. 

48. Consider, therefore, the Transfiguration as it relates to the 
human feelings of our Lord. It was the first definite preparation 
for His death. He had foretold it to His disciples six days before ; 
then takes with Him the three chosen ones into "an high moun- 
tain apart." From an exceeding high mountain, at the first taking 
on Him the ministry of life. He had beheld, and rejected the king- 
doms of the earth, and their glory: now, on a high mountain, 
He takes upon Him the ministry of death. Peter and they that 
were with him, as in Gethsemane, were heavy with sleep. Christ's 
work had to be done alone. 

The tradition is, that the Mount of Transfiguration was the sum- 
mit of Tabor; but Tabor is neither a high mountain, nor was it in 
any sense a mountain "apart f being in those years both inhabited 
and fortified. All the immediately preceding ministries of Christ 
had been at Cesarea Philippi. There is no mention of travel south- 



RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN ART 145 

ward in the six days that intervened between the warning given to 
His disciples, and the going up into the hill. What other hill could 
it be than the southward slope of that goodly mountain, Hermon, 
which is indeed the centre of all the Promised Land, from the enter- 
ing in of Hamath unto the river of Egypt; the mount of fruit- 
fulness, from which the springs of Jordan descended to the valleys 
of Israel. Along its mighty forest avenues, until the grass grew 
fair with the mountain lilies. His feet dashed in the dew of Hermon, 
He must have gone to pray his first recorded prayer about death; 
and from the steep of it, before He knelt, could see to the south all 
the dwelling-place of the people that had sat in darkness, and seen 
the great light, the land of Zabulon and of Naphtali, Galilee of the 
nations; — could see, even -with. His human sight, the gleam of that 
lake by Capernaum and Chorazin, and many a place loved by Him, 
and vainly ministered to, whose house was now left unto them deso- 
late ; and, chief of all, far in the utmost blue, the hills above Nazar- 
eth, sloping down to His old home : hills on which yet the stones lay 
loose, that had been taken up to cast at Him, when He left them 
forever. 

THE MOUNTAIN GLORY. 

49. "And as he prayed, two men stood by him." Among the 
many ways in which we miss the help and hold of Scripture, none 
is more subtle than our habit of supposing that, even as man, Christ 
was free from the Fear of Death. How could He then have been 
tempted as we are? since among all the trials of the earth, none 
spring from the dust more terrible than that Fear. It had to be 
borne by Him, indeed, in a unity, which we can never comprehend, 
wdth the foreknowledge of victory, — as His sorrow for Lazarus, with 
the consciousness of the power to restore him ; but it had to be borne, 
and that in its full earthly terror; and the presence of it is surely 
marked for us enough by the rising of those two at His side. When, 
in the desert. He was girding Himself for the work of life, angels 
of life came and ministered unto Him; now, in the fair world, 
when He is girding Himself for the work of death, the ministrants 
come to Him from the grave. 

But from the grave conquered. One, from that tomb under 
Abarim, which His own hand had sealed so long ago; the other 
from the rest in to which he had entered, without seeing corruption. 
There stood by Him Moses and Elias, and spake of His decease. 

Then, when the prayer is ended, the task accepted, first, since the 
star paused over Him at Bethlehem, the full glory falls upon Him 
from heaven, and the testimony is borne to his everlasting Sonship 
and power. "Hear ye him." 

If, in their remembrance of these things, and in their endeavor 
to follow in the footsteps of their Master, religious men of by-gone 
days, closing themselves in the hill solitudes, forgot sometimes, 



146 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

and sometimes feared, the duties they owed to the active world, we 
may perhaps pardon them more easily than we ought to pardon our- 
selves, if we neither seek any influence for good nor submit to it 
unsought, in scenes to which thus all the men whose writings we 
receive as inspired, together with their Lord, retired whenever they 
had any task or trial laid upon them needing "more than their usual 
strength of spirit. Nor, perhaps, should we have unprofitably entered 
into the mind of the earlier ages, if among our other thoughts, as 
we watch the chains of the snowy mountains rise on the horizon, 
we should sometimes admit the memory of the hour in which 
their Creator, among their solitudes, entered on His travail for the 
salvation of our race; and indulge the dream, that as the flaming 
and trembling mountains of the earth seem to be the monuments 
of the manifesting of his terror on Sinai, — these pure and white 
hills, near to the heaven, and sources of all good to the earth, are 
the appointed memorials of that light of His Mercy, that fell, snow- 
like, on the Mount of Transfiguration. — Pt. V, Ch. 20. 



MODERN PAINTERS. 
Vol. V. (1860.) 

Part VI. Op Leap Beauty — 10 Chaps. 

Part VII. Of Cloud Beauty — 4 Chaps. 

Part VIII. Of Ideas of Relation : — Invention Formal — 4 Chaps. 

Part IX. Op Ideas op Relation : — Invention Spiritual — 12 Chaps. 

"With this volume Mr. Ruskin brought his "Modern Painters" 
to a close, although he intended to have written at least one more 
on "Water." Like Vol. IV this is profusely illustrated, having 33 
page plates and 101 figure drawings. 

The subjects of the four sections, respectively, and the fact that 
the volume is the outcome of the author's riper years of study, 
should prepare the reader for many of his nobler passages of in- 
spired poetry. And truly we will not be disappointed. It brings us, 
over and over again, into close view of the sublimest things in nature, 
and notwithstanding the change of mind through which Ruskin 
had passed, it never fails to turn the mind upward, to nature's 
God. 

Part VIII and IX are of inestimable value to all who have 
a mind for the greater works of the great masters of art, especially 
the review of religious paintings. 

It is here that the critical mind of Ruskin is seen at the high- 
est. No one should think of visiting the great Venetian Art Gal- 
leries without first reading this volume; and it may be said that 
no art teacher is fully equipped who has not made this book his 
friend, and of Modern Painters as a whole, it may be said that 
no preacher, without it, has received the best aid to knowledge 
and faith which literature affords. 

We learn from a letter of Ruskin 's published in "The Life and 
Times of Sydney Smith." that he (Sydney Smith) was "the first 
in literary circles to assert the value of Modern Painters." 

M7 



148 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

TEACH OUR YOUTH TO SEE RATHER THAN TO SAY. 

The main thing which we ought to teach our youth is to see 
something, — all that the eyes which God has given them are cap- 
able of seeing. The sum of what we do teach them is to say some- 
thing. As far as I have experience of instruction, no man ever 
dreams of teaching a boy to get to the root of a matter; to think 
it out; to get quit of passion and desire in the process of thinking; 
or to fear no face of man in plainly asserting the ascertained result. 
But to say anything in a glib and graceful manner, — to give an 
epigrammatic turn to nothing, — to quench the dim perceptions of 
a feeble adversary, and parry cunningly the home thrusts of a 
strong one, — to invent blanknesses in speech for breathing time, 
and slipperinesses in speech for hiding time, — to polish malice to 
the deadliest edge, shape profession to the seemliest shadow, and 
mask self-interest under the fairest pretext, — all these skills we teach 
definitely, as the main arts of business and life. . . . 

The common plea that anything does to "exercise the mind 
upon" is an utterly false one. The human soul, in youth, is 
not a machine of which you can polish the cogs with any kelp or 
brickdust near at hand ; and, having got it into working order, and 
good, empty, and oiled serviceableness, start your immortal loco- 
motive at twenty-five years old or thirty, express from the Strait 
Gate, on the Narrow Road. The whole period of youth is one 
essentially of formation, edification, instruction, I use the words 
with their weight in them; in taking of stores, establishment in 
vital habits, hopes, and faiths. There is not an hour of it but is 
trembling with destinies, — not a moment of which, once past, the 
appointed work can ever be done again, or the neglected blow struck 
on the cold iron. Take your vase of Venice glass out of the furnace, 
and strew chaff over it in its transparent heat, and recover that 
to its clearness and rubied glory when the north wind has blown 
upon it; but do not think to strew chaff over the child fresh from 
God's presence, and to bring the heavenly colors back to him — at 
least in this world. — Appendix to Vol. V. 

THE LAW OF HELP AND HURT. 

4. In substance which we call "inanimate," as of clouds, or 
stones, their atoms may cohere to each other, or consist with each 
other, but they do not help each other. The removal of one 
part does not injure the rest. 

But in a plant, the taking away of any one part does injure the 
rest. Hurt or remove any portion of the sap, bark, or pith, the 
rest is injured. If any part enters into a state in which it no more 
assists the rest, and has thus become "helpless," we call it also 
''dead." 

The power r/hich causes the several portions of the plant to help 



RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN ART 149 

each other, we call life. Much more is this so in an animal. We 
may take away the branch of a tree without much harm to it ; but 
not the animal's hmb. Thus, intensity of life is also intensity of 
helpfulness — completeness of depending of each part on all the 
rest. The ceasing of this help is what we call corruption; and in 
proportion to the perfectness of the help, is the dreadfulness of the 
loss. The more intense the life has been, the more terrible is its 
corruption. 

The decomposition of a crystal is not necessarily impure at all. 
The fermentation of a wholesome liquid begins to admit the idea 
slightly; the decay of leaves yet more; of flowers, more; of ani- 
mals, with greater painfulness and terribleness in exact proportion 
to their original vitality; and the foulest of all corruption is that 
of the body of man ; and, in his body, that which is occasioned by 
disease, more than that of natural death. 

6. A pure or holy state of anything is that in which all its 
parts are helpful or consistent. They may or may not be homo- 
geneous. The highest or organic purities are composed of many 
elements in an entirely helpful state. The highest and first law of 
the universe — and the other name of life, is, therefore, "help." The 
other name of death is "separation." Governnient and co-opera- 
tion are in all things and eternally the laws of life. Anarchy and 
competition, eternally, and in all things, the laws of death. — Pt. 
VIIl, Ch. 1. 

"creation'" and "making" A DIFFERENCE. 

19. What is a "creation?" Nay, it may be replied, to "create" 
cannot be said of man's labor. On the contrary, it not only can 
be said, but is and must be said continually. You certainly do not 
talk of creating a watch, or creating a shoe; nevertheless you do 
talk of creating a feeling. Why is this? Look back to the great- 
est of all creation, that of the world. Suppose the trees had been 
ever so well or so ingeniously put together, stem and leaf, yet if 
they had not been able to grow, would they have been well created? 
Or suppose the fish had been cut and stitched finely out of skin 
and whalebone ; yet, cast upon the waters, had not been able to 
swim? Or suppose Adam and Eve had been made in the softest 
clay, ever so neatly, and set at the foot of the tree of knowledge, 
fastened up to it, quite unable to fall, or do anything else, would 
they have been well created, or in any true sense created at all? 

20. It will, perhaps, appear to you, after a little farther thought, 
that to create anything in reality is to put life into it. 

A poet, or creator, is therefore a person who puts things to- 
gether, not as a watchmaker steel, or a shoemaker leather, but 
■who puts life into them. 

His work is essentially this: it is the gathering and arranging 
of material by imagination, so as to have in it at last the harmony 



ISO THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

or helpfulness of life, and the passion or emotion of life. Mere 
fitting and adjustment of material is nothing; that is watchmak- 
ing. But helpful and passionate harmony, essentially choral har- 
mony, so called from the Greek word "rejoicing,"^ is the harmony 
of Apollo and the Muses; the word Muse and Mother being de- 
rived from the same root, meaning "passionate seeking," or love, 
of which the issue is passionate finding, or sacred invention. For 
which reason I could not bear to use any baser word than this of 
invention. And if the reader will think over all these things, 
and follow them out, as I think he may easily with this much of 
clew given him, he will not any more think it wrong in me to 
place invention so high among the powers of man.' — Pt. VIII, 
Ch. 1. The Law of Help. 

GREATNESS AND LITTLENESS. 

1. In the entire range of art principles, none perhaps present 
a difficulty so great to the student, or require from the teacher ex- 
pression so cautious, and yet so strong, as those which concern the 
nature and influence of magnitude. 

In one sense, and that deep, there is no such thing as magnitude. 
The least thing is as the greatest, and one day as a thousand years, 
in the eyes of the Maker of great and small things. In another 
sense, and that close to us and necessary, there exist both magni- 
tude and value. Though not a sparrow falls to the ground unnoted, 
there are yet creatures who are of more value than many; and 
the same Spirit which weighs the dust of the earth in a balance, 
counts the isles as a little thing. 

2. The just temper of human mind in this matter may, never- 
theless, be told shortly. Greatness can only be rightly estimated 
when minuteness is justly reverenced. Greatness is the aggrega- 
tion of minuteness; nor can its sublimity be felt truthfully by any 
mind unaccustomed to the affectionate watching of what is least. 

The Lord of power and life knew w^hich were His noblest works, 
when He bade His servant watch the play of the Leviathan, rather 
than dissect the spawn of the minnow. — Pt. VIII, Ch. 3. 

MAN IN THE IMAGE OF GOD. 

10. The directest manifestation of Deity to man is in His own im- 
age, that is, in man. 

"In his own image. After his likeness." The truth of these 

*This being, indeed, among the visiblest signs of the Divine or immortal life. 
We have got a base habit of opposing the word "mortal" or deathful" merely to 
•'tm-mortal ;" whereas it is essentially contrary to "divine," that which is death- 
ful being anarchic or disobedient, and that which is divine ruling and obedient ; 
this being the true distinction between flesh and spirit- 



RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN ART 151 

words seems to lie at the foundation of our knowledge both of 
God and man ; yet do we not usually pass the sentence by, in dull 
reverence, attaching no definite sense to it at all? . . . 

11. It cannot be supposed that the bodily shape of man resembles, 
or resembled, any bodily shape in Deity. The likeness must there- 
fore be, or have been, in the soul. Had it wholly passed away, and 
the Divine soul been altered into a soul brutal or diabolic, I sup- 
pose we should have been told of the change. But we are told 
nothing of the kind. The verse still stands as if for our use and 
trust. It was only death which was to be our punishment. Not 
change. So far as we live, the image is still there; defiled, if you 
will; broken, if you will; all but effaced, if you will, by death and 
the shadow of it. But not changed. We are not made now in 
any other image than God's. There are, indeed, the two states of 
this image — the earthly and heavenly, but both Adamite, both hu- 
man, both the same likeness; only one defiled, and one pure. So 
that the soul of man is still a mirror, wherein may be seen, darkly, 
the image of the mind of God. 



REVELATION IMPOSSIBLE TO THE CORRUPT MIND. 

11. These may seem daring words. I am sorry that they do; but 
I am helpless to soften them. Discover any other meaning of the 
text if you are able ; — but be sure that it is a meaning — a meaning 
in your head and heart — not a subtle gloss, nor a shifting of one 
verbal expression into another, both idealess. I repeat, that, to 
me, the verse has, and can have, no other signification than this — 
that the soul of man is a mirror of the mind of God. A mirror 
dark, distorted, broken, use what blameful words you please of its 
state; yet in the main, a true mirror, out of which alone, and by 
which alone, we can know anything of God at all. 

"How?" the reader, perhaps, answers indignantly. "I know the 
nature of God by revelation, not by looking into myself." 

Revelation to what? To a nature incapable of receiving truth? 
That cannot be; for only to a nature capable of truth, desirous of 
it, distinguishing it, feeding upon it, revelation is possible. To a 
being undesirous of it, and hating it, revelation is impossible. There 
can be none to a brute, or fiend. In so far, therefore, as you love 
truth, and live therein, in so far revelation can exist for you; — and 
in so far, your mind is the image of God's. 

god's REVELATION — LOVE. 

12. But consider farther, not only to what, but hy what, is the 
revelation. By sight? or word? If by sight, then to eyes which see 
justly. Otherwise, no sight would be revelation. So far, then, as 
your sight is just, it is the image of God's sight. 



252 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

If by words, — how do you know their meanings? Here is a 
short piece of precious word revelation, for instance. "God is love." 

Love! yes. But what is that^ The revelation does not tell 
you that I think. Look into the mirror, and you will see. Out 
of your own heart you may know what love is. In no other pos- 
sible way, — by no other help or sign. All the words and sounds 
ever uttered, all the revelations of cloud, or flame, or crystal, are 
utterly powerless. They cannot tell you, in the smallest point, what 
love means. Only the broken mirror can. 

GOD IS JUSTICE. 

13. Here is more revelation. "God is just!" Just I What is 
that? The revelation cannot help you to discover. You say it 
is dealing equitably or equally. But how do you discern the equal- 
ity? Not by inequality of mind; not by a mind incapable of 
weighing, judging, or distributing. If the lengths seem unequal 
in the broken mirror, for you they are unequal; but if they seem 
equal, then the mirror is true. So far as you recognize equality, 
and your conscience tells you what is just, so far your mind is 
the image of God's: and so far as you do not discern this nature 
of justice or equality, the words "God is just" bring no revelation 
to you. 

14. "But His thoughts are not as our thoughts." No: the sea 
is not as the standing pool by the wayside. Yet when the breeze 
crisps the pool, you may see the image of the breakers, and a like- 
ness of the foam. Nay, in some sort, the same foam. If the sea 
is forever invisible to you, something you may learn of it from the 
pool. Nothing, assuredly, any otherwise. 

"But this poor miserable Me! Is this, then, all the book I have 
got to read about God in?" Yes, truly so. No other book, no 
fragment of book than that will you ever find; — no velvet-bound 
missal, nor frankincensed manuscript; — nothing hieroglyphic nor 
cuneiform; papyrus and pyramid are alike silent on this matter; 
nothing in the clouds above, nor in the earth beneath. That flesh- 
bound volume is the only revelation that is, that was, or that can 
be. In that is the image of God painted ; in that is the law of God 
written; in that is the promise of God revealed. Know thyself; for 
through thyself only thou canst know God. 

THE HUMAN SOUL AS A REFLECTION OF THE DIVINE. 

15. Through the glass, darkly. But, except through the glass, 
in nowise. 

A tremulous crystal, waved as water, poured out upon the ground ; 
' — you may defile it, despise it, pollute it at your pleasure, and at 
your peril ; for on the peace of those weak waves must all the heaven 
you shall ever gain be first seen; and through such purity as you', 



RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN ART 153 

can win for those dark waves, must all the light of the risen Son of 
righteousness be bent down, by faint refraction. Cleanse them, 
and calm them, as you love your life. 

Therefore it is that all the power of nature depends on subjection 
to the human soul. Man is the sun of the world; more than the 
real sun. The fire of his wonderful heart is the only light and 
heat worth gauge or measure. Where he is, are the tropics; where 
he is not, the ice-world. — Pt. IX, Ch. 1. 



SPIRITUAL NATURE OF MAN. 

3. Man being the crowning and ruling work of God, it will 
follow that all his best art must have something to tell about him- 
self, as the soul of things, and ruler of creatures. It must also 
make this reference to himself under a true conception of his own 
nature. Therefore all art which involves no reference to man is 
inferior or nugatory. And all art which involves misconception 
of man, or base thought of him, is in that degree false, and base. 

Now the basest thought possible concerning him is, that he has 
no spiritual nature; and the foolishest misunderstanding of him 
possible is, that he has or should have, no animal nature. For his 
nature is nobly animal, nobly spiritual — coherently and irrevocably 
so; neither part of it may, but at its peril, expel, despise, or defy 
the other. All great art confesses and worships both. — Pt. IX, 
Ch. 2. 

PAITH INSPIRES FOR WORK. 

10. The right faith of man is not intended to give him repose, 
but to enable him to do his work. It is not intended that he 
should look away from the place he lives in now, and cheer him- 
self with thoughts of the place he is to live in next, but that he 
should look stoutly into this world, in faith that if he does his 
work thoroughly here, some good to others or himself, with which, 
however, he is not at present concerned, will come of it hereafter. 
And this kind of brave, but not very hopeful or cheerful faith, I 
perceive to be always rewarded by clear practical success and splen- 
did intellectual power; while the faith which dwells on the future 
fades away into rosy mist, and emptiness of musical air. That 
result indeed follows naturally enough on its habit of assuming 
that things must be right, or must come right, when, probably, 
the fact is, that so far as we are concerned, they are entirely wrong ; 
and going wrong: and also on its weak and false way of looking on 
what these religious persons call "the bright side of things," that 
is to say, on one side of them only, w^hen God has given them two 
sides, and intended us to see both. — Pt. IX, Ch. 2. 



154 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

CONTENTMENT ONLY CAN POSSESS. 

19. There are, indeed, two forms of discontent: one laborious, 
the other indolent and complaining. We respect the man of labori- 
ous desire, but let us not suppose that his restlessness is peace, or 
his ambition meekness. It is because of the special connection of 
meekness with contentment that it is promised that the meek shall 
^'inherit the earth." Neither covetous men, nor the Grave, can 
inherit anything;' they can but consume. Only contentment can 
possess. 

HOW TO BE SATISFIED. 

20. The most helpful and sacred work, therefore, which can at 
present be done for humanity, is to teach people (chiefly by example, 
as all best teaching must be done) not how "to better themselves," 
but how to "satisfy themselves." It is the curse of every evil na- 
tion and evil creature to eat, and not be satisfied. The words of 
blessing are, that they shall eat and be satisfied. And as there is 
only one kind of water which quenches all thirst, so there is only 
one kind of bread which satisfies all hunger, the bread of justice or 
righteousness; which hungering after, men shall always be filled, 
that being the bread of Heaven; but hungering after the bread, or 
wages, of unrighteousness, shall not be filled, that being the bread 
of Sodom. 

TAKE NO TROUBLOUS THOUGHT. 

21. And, in order to teach men how to be satisfied, it is nec- 
essary fully to understand the art and j'oy of humble life, — this, at 
present, of all arts or sciences being the one most needing study. 
Humble life — that is to say, proposing to itself no future exaltation, 
but only a sweet continuance; not excluding the idea of foresight, 
but wholly of fore-sorrow, and taking no troublous thought for 
coming days: so, also, not excluding the idea of providence, or 
provision, but wholly of accumulation; — the life of domestic af- 
fection and domestic peace, full of sensitiveness to all elements of 
costless and kind pleasure; — therefore, chiefly to the loveliness of 
the natural world. — Pt. IX, Ch. 11. 

1 "There are three things that are never satisfied, yea, four things say not, It 
ia enough: the grave; and the barren womb; the earth that is not filled with 
water ; and the fire, that saith not, It is enough !" 



VI 

PRE-RAPHAELITISM. 

(1851.) 

This little work was written in defense of a society known as "The 
Pre-Raphaelite Brethren," which originated in the desire to make 
nature the great teacher of art as against the tendency to reduce 
it to a set of rules. 

Ruskin basec his pamphlet on a text from his own writmgs in 
"Modern Painters," in which he advised that young artists "should 
go to nature in all singleness of heart, and talk with her labori- 
ously and trustingly, having no other thought but how best to 
penetrate her meaning, rejecting nothing, selecting nothing, and 
scorning nothing." 

Through the whole pa,mphlet he breathes a profound ladmiration 
for Turner, who as his model, here as elsewhere. But the key to it 
all, from the standpoint of this volume, is in the opening para- 
graph as follows: 

GOD DESIGNS THAT ALL MEN SHOULD WORK. 

It may be proved with much certainty, that God intends no man 
to live in this world without working, but it seems to me no less 
evident that He intends every man to be happy in his work. It 
is written, "in the sweat of thy brow," but it was never written, 
"in the breaking of thy heart," thou shalt eat bread; and I find 
that, as on the one hand, infinite misery is caused by idle peo- 
ple, who both fail in doing what was appointed for them to do, and 
set in motion various springs of mischief in matters in which tiiey 
should have no concern, so on the other hand, no small misery is 
caused by overworked and unhappy people, in the dark views which 
they necessarily take up themselves, and force upon others, of work 
itself. Were it not so, I believe the fact of their being unhappy is 
in itself a violation of divine law, and a sign of some kind of folly 
or sin in their way of life. Now, in order that people may be happy 
in their work, these three things are needed: they must be fit for 
it: they must not do too much of it; and they must have a sense 
of success in it — not a doubtful sense, such as need some testimony 



156 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

of other people for its confirmation, but a sure sense, or rather 
knowledge, that so much work has been done well, and fruitfully 
done, whatever the world may say or think about it. So that in 
order that a man may be happy, it is necessary that he should not 
only be capable of his work, but a good judge of his work. 



VII 

GIOTTO AND HIS WORKS IN PADUA. 
One Vol. (1853.) 

Mr. Ruskin tells us, that this book was not written "with any 
idea of attempting a history of Giotto's life. It consists of a series 
of notes in explanation of the frescoes in the Arena Chapel at 
'Padua. But Mr. Harrison says of it: — "I know nothing of 
Ruskin's more admirable, and more valuable than this sympathetic 
estimate of Giotto's marvellous genius and romantic life, with these 
brief, vivid, and strictly historic notes. . . . Giotto was the most 
profound, the most humane, the soundest and most balanced intel- 
lect in the entire history of modern art . . . This, Ruskin was 
the first to teach us. His estimate of Giotto's compositions is based 
on a sympathetic, but not a servile understanding of the apocry- 
phal Gospels, current in the fourteenth century, and the quaint and 
beautiful legends of the Virgin's life." 

The essay consists of only 80 pages, but it is so fully in harmony 
with the purpose of the present volume that we find it difficult to 
select any of its sentences to the exclusion of others. The reason 
for this is made apparent in the following passage: "Giotto was not 
indeed one of the most accomplished painters, but he was one of 
the greatest men, who ever lived. He was the first master of his 
time, in architecture as well as in painting; he was the friend of 
Dante, and the undisputed interpreter of religious truth, by means 
of painting, over the whole of Italy. The works of such a man may 
not be the best to set before children in order to teach them draw- 
ing; but they assuredly should be studied with the greatest care 
by all who are interested in the history of the human mind. 

As far as I am aware, he never painted profane subjects. All 
his important existing works are exclusively devoted to the illus- 
tration of Christianity." 

The frescoes of Scripture subjects in the chapel number 38. Rus- 
kin's descriptive representation of these works of art affords us more 

157 



xS8 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

than a glimpse of their beauty and character. Three of these are se- 
lected here as examples of the whole, as well as for the lessons con- 
veyed in these rare word-paintings, drawn in loving testimony of a 
great artist's work. 

THE MARRIAGE IN CANA. 

23. It is strange that the sweet significance of this first of 
the miracles should have been lost sight of by nearly 
all artists after Giotto; and that no effort was made by them to 
conceive the circumstances of it in simplicity. The poverty of the 
family in which the marriage took place, — proved sufficiently by 
the fact that a carpenter's wife not only was asked as a chief guest, 
but even had authority over the servants, — is shown further to 
have been distressful, or at least embarrassed, poverty by their want 
of wine on such an occasion. It was not certainly to remedy an 
accident of careless provision, but to supply a need sorrowfully be- 
traying the narrow circum.stances of His hosts, that our Lord 
wrought the beginning of miracles. Many mystic meanings have 
been sought in the act, which, though there is no need to deny, there 
is little evidence to certify: but we may joyfully accept, as its first 
indisputable meaning, that of simple kindness ; the wine being pro- 
vided here, when needed, as the bread and fish were afterwards for 
the hungry multitudes. The whole value of the miracle, in its 
serviceable tenderness, is at once effaced when the marriage is sup- 
posed, as by Veronese and other artists of later times, to have taken 
place at the house of a rich man. For the rest, Giotto sufficiently 
implies, by the lifted hand of the Madonna, and the action of the 
fingers of the bridegroom, as if they held sacramental bread, that 
there lay a deeper meaning under the miracle for those who could 
accept it. How all miracle is accepted by common humanity, he 
has also shown in the figure of the ruler of the feast, drinking. 
This unregarding forgetfulness of present spiritual power is simi- 
larly marked by Veronese, by placing the figure of a fool with his 
bauble immediately underneath that' of Christ, and by making a 
cat play with her shadow in one of the wine-vases. 

It is to be remembered, however, in examining _ all pictures of 
this subject, that the miracle was not made manifest to all the 
guests; — to none indeed, seemingly, except Christ's own disciples; 
the ruler of the feast, and probably most of those present (except 
the servants who drew the water), knew or observed nothing of 
w^hat was passing, and merely thought the good wine had been "kept 
until now." 

THE LAST SUPPER. 

28. I have not examined the original fresco with care 
enough to be able to say whether the uninteresting quiet- 
ness of its design is redeemed by more than ordinary attention to 
exi3ression; it is one of the least attractive subjects in the Arena 



RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN ART 159 

Chapel, and always sure to be passed over in any general observa- 
tion of the series: nevertheless, however unfavourably it may at 
first contrast with the designs of later masters, and especially with 
Leonardo's, the reader should not fail to observe that Giotto's aim, 
had it been successful, was the higher of the two, as giving truer 
rendering of the probable fact. There is no distinct evidence, in 
the sacred text, of the annunciation of coming treachery having pro- 
duced among the disciples the violent surprise and agitation rep- 
resented by Leonardo. Naturally, they would not at first understand 
what was meant. They knew nothing distinctly of the machina- 
tions of the priests; and so little of the character or purposes of 
Judas, that even after he had received the sop which was to point 
him out to the others as false; — and after they had heard the in- 
junction, "That thou doest, do quickly," — the other disciples had 
still no conception of the significance, either of the saying, or the 
act: they thought that Christ meant he was to buy something for 
the feast. Nay, Judas himself, so far from starting, as a con- 
victed traitor, and thereby betraying himself, as in Leonardo's pic- 
ture, had not, when Christ's first words were uttered, any immedi- 
ately active intention formed. The devil had not entered into him 
until he received the sop. The passage in St. John's account is a 
curious one, and little noticed; but it marks very distinctly the 
paralysed state of the man's mind. He had talked with the priests, 
covenanted with them, and even sought opportunity to bring Jesus 
into their hands; but while such opportunity was wanting, the act 
had never presented itself fully to him for adoption or rejection. 
He had toyed with it, dreamed over it, hesitated, and procrastinated 
over it, as a stupid and cowardly person would, such as traitors are 
apt to be. But the way of retreat was yet open ; the conquest of the 
tempter not complete. Only after receiving the sop the idea finally 
presented itself clearly, and was accepted, "To-night, while He is in 
the garden, I can do it ; and I will." And Giotto has indicated this 
distinctly by giving Judas still the Apostle's nimbus, both in this 
subject and in that of the Washing of the Feet; while it is taken 
away in the previous subject of the Hiring, and the following one 
of the Seizure: thus it fluctuates, expires, and reillumines itself, 
until his fall is consummated. This being the general state of the 
Apostles' knowledge, the words, "One of you shall betray me," would 
excite no feeling in their minds correspondent to that with which 
we now read the prophetic sentence. What this "giving up" of 
their Master meant became a question of bitter and self-searching 
thought with them, — gradually of intense sorrow and questioning. 
But had they understood it in the sense we now understand it, they 
would never have each asked, "Lord, is it I?" Peter believed him- 
self incapable even of denying Christ: and of giving him up to death 
for money, every one of his true disciples knew themselves incap- 
able; the thought never occurred to them. In slowly-increasing 



i6o THE RELIGION OF RVSKIN 

:wonder and sorrow (rjp^avTo Xv-n-eioOai, Mark xiv. 19) , not knowing 
"what was meant, they asked one by one, with pauses between, "Is 
it I?" and another, "Is it I?" and this so quietly and timidly that 
the one who was lying on Christ's breast never stirred from his 
place; and Peter, afraid to speak, signed to him to ask who it was. 

THE RESURRECTION. 

36, Quite one of the loveliest designs of the series. It was 
a favorite subject with Giotto; meeting, in all its con- 
ditions, his love of what was most mysterious, yet most comforting 
and full of hope, in the doctrines of his religion. His joy in the 
fact of the Resurrection, his sense of its function, as the key and 
primal truth of Christianity, was far too deep to allow him to dwell 
on any of its minor circumstances, as later designers did, repre- 
senting the moment of bursting the tomb, and the supposed terror 
of its guards. With Giotto the leading thought is not of physical 
reanimation, nor of the momentarily exerted power of breaking the 
bars of the grave; but the consummation of Christ's work in the 
first manifesting to human eyes, and the eyes of one who had loved 
Him and believed in Him, His power to take again the life He had 
laid down. This first appearance to her out of whom He had cast 
seven devils is indeed the very central fact of the Resurrection. The 
keepers had not seen Christ ; they had seen only the angel descend- 
ing, whose countenance was like lightning : for fear of him they be- 
came as dead; yet this fear, though great enough to cause them to 
swoon, was so far conquered at the return of morning, that they 
were ready to take money-payment for giving a false report of the 
circumstances. The Magdalen, therefore, is the first witness of the 
Resurrection; to the love, for whose sake much had been forgiven, 
this gift is also first given ; and as the first witness of the truth, so 
she is the first messenger of the Gospel. To the Apostles it was 
granted to proclaim the Resurrection to all nations ; but the Magda- 
len was bidden to proclaim it to the Apostles. 

In the chapel of the Bargello, Giotto has rendered this scene with 
yet more passionate sympathy. Here, however, its significance is 
more thoughtfully indicated through all the accessories, down even 
to the withered trees above the sepulchre, while those of the garden 
burst into leaf. This could hardly escape notice when the barren 
boughs were compared by the spectator with the rich^ folia ee of the 
neighbouring designs, though, in the detached plate, it might easily 
be lost sight of. 



VIII 

THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 
Three Letters to Beginners. (1856.) 
With Illustrations. 

This little volume of less than 200 pages was first used as a Manual 
of Elementary Drawing and, as such, was in popular demand as soon 
as published. It was not however designed by the Author as a Man- 
ual for Artists, but as a book of suggestions and instruction for the 
young. It is written in the most simple and captivating form of 
language, so that, even to those who care nothing for the art of draw- 
ing, it is one of the most delightful books for the young to read. 

Ruskin believed that everybody could learn drawing; that the 
head and hand could be trained to steady thought and aim, and that 
the result would be to greatly augment the vision and powers of the 
mind. He illustrated the simplicity of the art in this volume by 
drawings of his own, which are given in the illustrations of all good 
editions of his works. The subjects are treated from the stand- 
points of: — 1. "First Practice." 2. "Sketching from Nature." 
3. "Color and Composition." 

This is one of the books that ought to be available in a handy 
form for its practical value and beauty of expression, as well as for 
its worth as a class book for students. 

IX 

THE ELEMENTS OF PERSPECTIVE. 
Arranged for the Use of Schools. (1859.) 

A supplementary volume to "The Elements of Drawing," and, 
like it, ought to be available as a handy book, or manual, for the 
youth of our land. It is written with great clearness and concise- 
ness, in one hundred pages, and the subject is illustrated by Ruskin 
himself. 

It is strictly what it professes to be, a school-book of instruction 
and is exceptional, among the Author's works, in that it offers no 
moral sermons, or religious teaching, other than that of the truth of 
the subject itself. 

i6i 



X 

ADDRESS AT CAMBRIDGE. 

(1858.) 

(Republished in Vol. I. ''On the Old Road.") 

An inaugural address delivered at a school of Art, designed for 
workmen, treating of the principles to be applied in such a school. 
And yet Ruskin here announced that the Commercial value of Art 
cannot be acquired in this way. "You may lecture on the princi- 
ples of Art to every school — and you will find that it can't be done on 
principles. . . . There's no way of getting good Art but one — 
at once the simplest and most difficult — namely to enjoy it. Exam- 
ine the history of nations, and you will find that good Art has only 
been produced by nations who rejoiced in it; fed themselves with it, 
as if it were bread ; basked in it, as if it were sunshine ; shouted at 
the sight of it; danced with the delight of it; quarrelled for it; 
starved for it; did, in fact, precisely the opposite with it of what we 
want to do with it — they malce it to keep and we to sell." 

And again he says in this lecture: — "Thus end all the arts of life, 
only in death ; and thus issue all the gifts of man, only in dishonor, 
when they are pursued or possessed in the service of pleasure only." 

This, in fact is the real theme of the address: "Even when paint- 
ing does appear to have been pursued for pleasure only, if ever you 
find it rise to any noble level, you will also find that a stem search 
after truth has been at the root of its nobleness." 

NOBLEST THINGS LOST. 

"I had hoped to show you how many of the best impulses of the 
heart were lost in frivolity or sensuality, for want of purer beauty to 
contemplate, and of noble thoughts to associate with the fervor of 
hallowed passion ; how, finally, a great part of the vital power of our 
religious faith was lost in us, for want of such art as would realize in 
some rational, probable, believable way, those events of sacred his- 
tory which, as they visibly and intelligibly occurred, may also be visi- 
bly and intelligibly represented." 

ESTEEM OF GREATER WORKS THAN OUR OWN. 

"What you may have to teach the young men here is, not so much 
what they can do, as what they cannot; — to make them see how 

162 



RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN ART 163 

much there is in nature which cannot be imitated, and how much in 
man which cannot be emulated. He only can be truly said to be 
educated in Art to whom all his work is only a feeble sign of glories 
which he cannot convey, and a feeble means of measuring, with 
ever enlarging admiration, the great and untraversable gulf which 
God has set between the great and the common intelligences of man- 
kind ; and all the triumphs of Art which man can commonly achieve 
are only crowned by pure delight in natural scenes themselves, and 
by the sacred and self-forgetful veneration which can be nobly 
abashed, and tremblingly exalted, in the presence of a human 
spirit greater than his own." 



XI 

HISTORY AND CRITICISM OF ART. 

1. Lord Lindsay's "Christian Art." 1847. 

2. Eastlake's History of Oil Painting. 1848. 

3. Samuel Prout. 1849. 

4. Sir Joshua and Holbein. 1860. 

These essays are in the nature of "reviews" of the works named. 
They are among the best examples of Ruskin's critical mind. They 
are the work of a Master who knows his subject and is fully quali- 
fied to detect all weaknesses, and point to the elements of strength. 
Ruskin speaks of Lindsay as his own "first master in Italian art," 
and in "The Eagle's Nest" twenty-five years later he pays high trib- 
ute to him as a "historian of art." The reader who desires a clear 
view of the correspondence of the departments of art with those of 
human development would do well to read this review. We quote 
only the closing passage : — 

PROGRESS OP NATIONS. 

"Whatever else we may deem of the Progress of Nations, one char- 
acter of that progress is determined and discernible. As in the 
encroachment of the land upon the sea, the strength of the sandy 
bastions is raised out of the sifted ruin of ancient inland hills — for 
every tongue of level land that stretches into the deep, the fall of 
Alps has been heard among the clouds, and as the fields of industry 
enlarge, the intercourse with Heaven is shortened. Let it not be 
doubted that as this change is inevitable, so it is expedient, though 
the form of teaching adopted and of duty prescribed be less mythic 
and contemplative, more active and unassisted: — for the light of 
Transfiguration on the Mountain is substituted the Fire of Coals 
upon the 'Shore, and on the charge to hear the Shepherd, follows 
that to feed the Sheep. Doubtful we may be for a time, and appar- 
ently deserted, but if, as we wait, we still look forward with steadfast 
will and humble heart, so that our Hope for the Future may be fed, 
not dulled or diverted by our love for the Past, we shall not be long 
left without a Guide: — the way will be opened, the Precursor ap- 
pointed — the Hour will come, and the Man." 

164 



RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN ART 165 

The Essay on "Eastlahe" is a review of that author's "History of 
Oil Painting" and of an Essay by "Theophilus" — Priest and Monk. 
' "Samuel Prouf differs from the first two of this series, in the 
source and setting of the subject. Ruskin here tells the interesting 
story of the English boy, stirred to enthusiasm by his love for water- 
color work just when Turner was giving new and enlarging con- 
ceptions of that phase of art. Ruskin further shows us how Prout 
entered into new fields and studied architectural drawing, and 
says : "There is not a landsape of recent times in which the treat- 
ment of the architectural features has not been affected by principles 
which were first developed by Prout." 

Sir Joshua and Holbein, the last of the four reviews was devoted to 
a friendly criticism of two great paintings by Sir Joshua Reynolds, 
viz.: "The Holy Family," and "The Graces;" and Holbein's "Ma- 
donna." 

These essays were first published as Magazine articles and were in- 
eluded in the first volume of "On the Old Road." See Appendix. 



LECTURES ON ART. 
One Vol. Seven Lectuees. (1870.) 

In these lectures, delivered at the University of Oxford, we have 
Ruskin at the best of his scholarship. In other works he is often 
more entertaining : — his pen pictures appeal more readily to the pop- 
ular taste; — at other times he declaims against evil things with 
greater passion, or speaks with intenser prophetic fire as the "voice of 
one crying in the wilderness!" 

But here, Ruskin is the Critic among critics, and he speaks with a 
greater care for accuracy; here he is the Teacher, — the Professor of 
the grand old University. Here then we look for studied expression, 
— words well weighed, the very best of the Philosopher. And truly 
we find it. 

The respective titles of these^ seven lectures are suggestive: — (1) 
Inaugural. (2.) The Relation of Art to Religion. (3.) The 
Relation of Art to Morals. (4) The Relation of Art to Use. (5) 
Line. (6) Light. (7) Color. The second and third of these 
are especially to be commended from the standpoint of our present 
study. All religious teachers should read them over and over again. 

In one of the following selections, (clauses 83, 84) we find a sug- 
gestion of Charles M. Sheldon's Story, "Robert Hardy's Seven Days." 

THE PRIDE OF FAITH. 

38. Above all things, see that you be modest in your thoughts, 
for of this one thing we may be absolutely sure, that all our thoughts 
are but degrees of darkness. And in these days you have to guard 
against the fatallest darkness of two opposite Prides: the Pride of 
Faith, which imagines that the Nature of the Deity can be defined 
by its convictions; and the Pride of Science, which imagines that 
the Energy of Deity can be explained by its analysis. 

39. Of these, the first, the Pride of Faith, is now, as it has been 
always, the most deadly, because the most complacent and subtle; 
because it invests every evil passion of our nature with the aspect of 
an angel of light, and enables the self-love, which might otherwise 
have been put to wholesome shame, and the cruel carelessness of the 

i66 



RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN ART 167 

ruin of our fellow-men, which might otherwise have been warmed 
into human love, or at least checked by human intelligence, to con- 
geal themselves into the mortal intellectual disease of imagining 
that myriads of the inhabitants of the world for four thousand years 
have been left to wander and perish, many of them everlastingly, 
in order that, in fullness of time, divine truth might be preached 
sufiiciently to ourselves; with this farther ineffable mischief for 
direct result, that multitudes of kindly-disposed, gentle, and submis- 
sive persons, who might else by their true patience have alloyed the 
hardness of the common crowd, and by their activity for good, bal- 
anced its misdoing, are withdrawn from all such true service of man, 
that they may pass the best part of their lives in what they are told ia 
the service of God ; namely, desiring what they cannot obtain, lament- 
ing what they could avoid, and reflecting on what they cannot under- 
stand. 

RIGHT THINGS PROCEED FROM THE DIVINE. 

44. The more impartially you examine the phenomena of im- 
agination, the more firmly you will be led to conclude that they are 
the result of the influence of the common and vital, but not, there- 
fore, less divine spirit, of which some portion is given to all living 
creatures in such manner as may be adapted to their rank in crea- 
tion; and that everything which men rightly accomplish is indeed 
done by divine help, but under a consistent law which is never de- 
parted from. 

The strength of this spiritual life within us may be increased or 
lessened by our own conduct ; it varies from time to time, as physical 
strength varies; it is summoned on different occasions by our will, 
and dejected by our distress, or our sin; but it is always equally 
human, and equally divine. We are men, and not mere animals, 
because a special form of it is with us always; we are nobler and 
baser men, as it is with us more or less ; but it is never given to us in 
any degree which can make us more than men. 

RELIGION AND REALISTIC ART. 

56. In its higher branches it touches the most sincere religious 
minds, affecting an earnest class of persons who cannot be reached by 
merely poetical design ; while in its lowest, it addresses itself not only 
to the most vulgar desires for religious excitement, but to the mere 
thirst for sensation of horror which characterizes the uneducated 
orders of partially civilized countries ; nor merely to the thirst for 
horror, but to the strange love of death, as such, which has sometimes 
in Catholic countries showed itself peculiarly by the endeavor to 
paint the images in the chapels of the Sepulchre so as to look decep- 
tively like corpses. The same morbid instinct has also affected the 
minds of many among the more imaginative and powerful artists 
with a feverish gloom which distorts their finest work ; and lastly — 



1 68 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

and this is the worst of all its effects — it has occupied the sensibility 
of Christian women, universally, in lamenting the sufferings of 
Christ, instead of preventing those of His people. 

57. When any of you next go abroad, observe, and consider the 
meaning of the sculptures and paintings, which of every rank in art, 
and in every chapel and cathedral, and by every mountain path, re- 
call the hours, and represent the agonies, of the Passion of Christ: 
and try to form some estimate of the efforts that have been made by 
the four arts of eloquence, music, painting, and sculpture, since the 
twelfth century, to wring out of the hearts of women the last drops 
of pity that could be excited for this merely physical agony : for the 
art nearly always dwells on the physical wounds or exhaustion chiefly 
and degrades, far more than it animates, the conception of pain. 

Then try to conceive the quantity of time, and of excited and 
thrilling emotion, which have been wasted by the tender and deli- 
cate women of Christendom during these last six hundred years, in 
thus picturing to themselves, under the influence of such imagery, the 
bodily pain, long since passed, of One Person — which, so far as they 
indeed conceived it to be sustained by a divine nature, could not for 
that reason have been less endurable than the agonies of any simple 
human death by torture ; and then try to estimate what might have 
been the better result, for the righteousness and felicity of mankind, 
if these same women had been taught the deep meaning of the last 
words that were ever spoken by their Master to those who had minis- 
tered to Him of their substance: "Daughters of Jerusalem, wef^p 
not for me, but weep for yourselves, and for your" children." 

EIGHT RECOGNITION OF DEEDS. 

58. Think, what history might have been to us now; nay, what a 
different history that all of Europe might have become, if it had but 
been the object both of the people to discern, and of their arts to 
honor and bear record of the great deeds of their worthiest men. 
And if, instead of living, as they have always hitherto done, in a hell- 
ish cloud of contention and revenge, lighted by fantastic dreams of 
cloudy sanctities, they had sought to reward and punish justly, wher- 
ever reward and punishment were due, but chiefly to reward ; and at 
least rather to bear testimony to the human acts which deserved 
God's anger or His blessing, than only in presumptuous imagination 
to display the secrets of Judgment, of the beatitudes of Eternity. 

THE master's cross AND OURS. 

59. Such I conceive generally, though indeed with good arising 
out of it, for every great evil brings some good in its backward 
eddies — such I conceive to have been the deadly function of art in its 
ministry to what, whether in heathen or Christian lands, and 
whether in the pageantry of words, or colors^ or fair forms, is truly, 



RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN ART 169 

and in the deep sense, to be called idolatry — the serving with the 
best of our hearts and minds, some dear or sad fantasy which we have 
made for ourselves, while we disobey the present call of the Master, 
who is not dead, and who is not now fainting under His Cross, but 
requiring us to take up ours. 

THE VALUE OF A CONSECRATED PLACE OF PRAYER. 

61. Do not think I underrate the importance of the sentiments 
connected with their church to the population of a pastoral village. 
I admit, in its fullest extent, the moral value of the scene, which is 
almost always one of perfect purity and peace; and of the sense of 
supernatural love and protection, which fills and surrounds the low 
aisles and homely porch. But the question I desire earnestly to 
leave with you is, whether all the earth ought not to be peaceful and 
pure, and the acknowledgment of the divine protection as univer- 
sal, as its reality? That in a mysterious way the preesnce of Deity is 
vouchsafed where it is sought, and withdrawn where it is forgotten, 
must of course be granted as the first postulate in the inquiry: but 
the point for our decision is just this, whether it ought always to 
be sought in one place only, and forgotten in every other. 

DECORATION OF THE HOUSE OF WORSHIP. 

62. Suppose it be admitted that by inclosing ground with walls, 
and performing certain ceremonies there habitually, some kind of 
sanctity is indeed secured within that space — still the question re- 
mains open whether it be advisable for religious purposes to decorate 
the enclosure. For separation the mere walls would be enough. 
What is the purpose of your decoration ? 

Let us take an instance — the most notable with which I am ac- 
quainted, the Cathedral of Chartres. You have there the most splen- 
did colored glass, and the richest sculpture, and the grandest pro- 
portions of building, united to produce a sensation of pleasure and 
awe. We profess that this is to honor the Deity ; or in other words, 
that it is pleasing to Him that we should delight our eyes with blue 
and gold and vermilion ; windows lighted from within by the luster 
stones laid one on another, and ingeniously carved. 

THE BEAUTY OF GOD^S TEMPLE. 

63. I do not think that it can be doubted that it is pleasing to 
Him when we do this ; for He has Himself prepared for us, nearly 
every morning and evening, windows painted with divine art, in blue 
and gold and vermilion ; windows lighted from within by the luster 
of that heaven which we may assume, at least with more certainty 
than any consecrated ground, to be one of His dwelling-places. 
Again, in every mountain side, and cliff of rude sea-shore, He has 



170 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

heaped stones one upon another of greater magnitude than those of 
Chartres Cathedral, and sculptured them with floral ornament — sure- 
ly not less sacred because living. 

CONSIDER THE WORK OF HIS HANDS. 

64. Must it not then be only because we love our own work better 
than His, that we respect the lucent glass, but not the lucent clouds ; 
that we weave embroidered robes with ingenious fingers, and make 
bright the gilded vaults we have beautifully ordained — while yet we 
have not considered the heavens the work of His fingers; nor the 
stars of the strange vault which He has ordained. And do we dream 
that by carving fonts and lifting pillars in His honor, who cuts the 
way of the rivers among the rocks, and at whose reproof the 
pillars of the earth are astonished, we shall obtain pardon for 
the dishonor done to the hills and streams by which He has ap- 
pointed our dwelling-place — for the infection of their sweet air 
with poison — for the burning up of their tender grass and 
flowers with fire, and for spreading such a shame of mixed luxury 
and misery over our native lands, as if we labored only that, at 
least here in England, we might be able to give the lie to the 
song, whether of the Cherubim above, or Church beneath — "Holy, 
holy. Lord God of all creatures; Heaven — and Earth — are full of 
Thy glory?" 

65. This is the thing which I know — and which, if you labor faith- 
fully, you shall know also — that in reverence is the chief joy and 
power of life — reverence for what is pure and bright in your own 
youth; for what is true and tried in the age of others; for all that is 
gracious among the living, great among the dead, and marvelous in 
the powers that cannot die. — Led. 11. 

SONG AN INDEX TO MORAL EMOTION. 

67. You must have the right moral state first, or you cannot have 
the art. But when the art is once obtained, its reflected action, en- 
hances and completes the moral state out of which it arose, and, 
above all, communicates the exaltation to other minds which are al- 
ready morally capable of the like. 

For instance, take the art of singing, and the simplest perfect 
master of it (up to the limits of his nature) whom can you find — a 
skylark. From him you may learn what it is to "sing for joy." 
You must get the moral state first, the pure gladness, then give it fin- 
ished expression ; and it is perfected in itself, and made communica- 
ble to other creatures capable of such joy. But it is incommunica- 
ble to those who are not prepared to receive it. 

Now all right human song is, similarly, the finished expression, by 
art, of the joy or grief of noble persons, for right causes. And accur- 



RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN ART 171 

ately in proportion to the Tightness of the cause, and purity of the 
emotion, is the possibiHty of the fine art. A maiden may sing of 
her lost love, but a miser cannot sing of his lost money. And with 
absolute precision from highest to lowest, the fineness of the possible 
art is an index of the moral purity and majesty of the emotion it 
expresses. You may test it practically at any instant. Question 
with yourselves respecting any feeling that has taken strong posses- 
sion of your mind, "Could this be sung by a master, and sung nobly, 
with a true melody and art?" Then it is a right feeling. Could it 
not be sung at all, or only sung ludicrously? It is a base one. And 
that is so in all the arts ; so that with mathematical precision, subject 
to no error or exception, the art of a nation, so far as it exists, is an 
exponent of its ethical state. 

GOOD LANGUAGE BOOTED IN MORAL CHAEACTEE. 

68. An exponent, observe, and exalting influence; but not the 
root or cause. You cannot paint or sing yourselves into being good 
men; you must be good men before you can either paint or sing, 
and then the color and sound will complete in you all that is best. 

No art-teaching could be of use to you, but would rather be harm- 
ful, unless it was grafted on something deeper than all art. For in- 
deed not only with this, but much more with the art of all men, that 
of language, the chief vices of education have arisen from the one 
great fallacy of supposing that noble language is a communicable 
trick of grammar and accent, instead of simply the careful expres- 
sion of right thought. All the virtues of language are, in their roots, 
moral ; it becomes accurate if the speaker desires to be true ; clear, if 
he speaks with sympathy and a desire to be intelligible ; powerful, if 
he has earnestness; pleasant if he has sense of rhythm and order. 
There are no other virtues of language producible by art than these ; 
but let me mark more deeply for an instant the significance of one 
of them. Language, I said, is only clear when it is sympathetic. 
You can, in truth, understand a man's word only by understanding 
his temper. Your own word is also as of an unknown tongue to him 
unless he understands yours. And it is this which makes the art of 
language, if any one is to be chosen separately from the rest, that 
which is fittest for the instrument of a gentleman's education. To 
teach the meaning of a word thoroughly is to teach the nature of the 
spirit that coined it ; the secret of language is the secret of sympathy, 
and its full charm is possible only to the gentle. And thus the prin- 
ciples of beautiful speech have all been fixed by sincere and kindly 
speech. On the laws which have been determined by sincerity, 
false speech, apparently beautiful, may afterward be constructed; 
but all such utterance, whether in oration or poetry, is not only with- 
out permanent power, but it is destructive of the principles it has 
usurped. So long as no words are uttered but in faithfulness, so 
long the art of language goes on exalting itself; but the moment it 



172 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

is shaped and chiseled on external principles, it falls into frivolity, 
and perishes. 

THE ORIGIN OF GOOD. 

76. You will perceive that all good has its origin in good, never 
in evil ; that the fact of either literature or painting being truly fine 
of their kind, whatever their mistaken aim or partial error, is proof 
of their noble origin: and that, if there is indeed sterling value in 
the thing done, it has come of a sterling worth in the soul that did 
it, however alloyed or defiled by conditions of sin which are some- 
times more appalling or more strange than those which all may de- 
tect in their own hearts, because they are part of a personality alto- 
gether larger than ours, and as far beyond our judgment in its dark- 
ness as beyond our following in its light. 

PAEABLE OF ''tHE LAST SEVEN DAYS." 

83. Supposing it were told any of you by a physician whose word 
you could not but trust, that you had not more than seven days to 
live. And suppose also that, by the manner of your education it 
happened to you, as it has happened to many, never to have heard 
of any future state, or not to have credited what you heard; and 
therefore that you had to face this fact of the approach of death in its 
simplicity : fearing no punishment for any sin that you might have 
before committed, or in the coming days might determine to commit; 
and having similarly no hope of reward for past, or yet possible, 
virtue; nor even of any consciousness whatever to be left to you, 
after the seventh day had ended, either of the results of your acts to 
those whom you loved, or of the feelings of any survivors toward 
you. Then the manner in which you would spend the seven days 
is an exact measure of the morality of your nature. 

84. I know that some of you, and t believe the greater number 
of you, would, in such a case, spend the granted days entirely as you 
ought. Neither in numbering the errors, or deploring the pleas- 
ures of the past; nor in grasping at vile good in the present, nor 
vainly lamenting the darkness of the future ; but in instant and earn- 
est execution of whatever it might be possible for you to accomplish 
in the time, in setting your affairs in order, and in providing for the 
future comfort, and — so far as you might by any message or record 
of yourself, for the consolation — of those whom you loved, and by 
whom you desired to be remembered, not for your good, but for 
theirs. How far you might fail through human weakness, in 
shame for the past, despair at the little that could in the remnant of 
life be accomplished, or the intolerable pain of broken affection, 
would depend wholly on the degree in which your nature had been 
depressed or fortified by the manner of your past life. But I think 
there are few of you who would not spend those last days better than 
all that had preceded them. 



RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN ART 173 

85. If you look accurately through the records of the lives that 
have been most useful to humanity, you will find that all that has 
been done best, has been done so ; that to the clearest intellects and 
highest souls — to the true children of the Father, with whom a thou- 
sand years are as one day, their poor seventy years are but as seven 
days. The removal of the shadow of death from them to an uncer- 
tain, but always narrow distance never takes away from them their 
intuition of it^s approach; the extending to them of a few hours 
more or less of light abates not their acknowledgment of the in- 
finitude that must remain to be known beyond their knowledge — 
done beyond their deeds; the unprofitableness of their momentary 
service is wrought in a magnificent despair, and their very honor is 
{bequeathed by them for the joy of others, as they lie down to their 
rest, regarding for themselves the voice of men no more. 

TRUE JUSTICE REWARDS VIRTUE OPPOSES VICE. 

89. I believe it to be quite one of the crowning wickednesses of 
this age that we have starved and chilled our faculty of indignation, 
and neither desire nor dare to punish crimes justly. We have taken 
up the benevolent idea, forsooth, that justice is to be preventive in- 
stead of vindictive; and we imagine that we are to punish, not in 
anger, but in expediency; not that we may give deserved pain to 
the person in fault, but that we may frighten other people from com- 
mitting the same fault. The beautiful theory of this non-vindictive 
justice is, that having convicted a man of a crime worthy of death, 
we entirely pardon the criminal, restore him to his place in our affec- 
tion and esteem, and then hang him, not as a malefactor, but as a 
scarecrow. That is the theory. And the practice is, that we send a 
child to prison for a month for stealing a handful of walnuts, for fear 
that other children should come to steal more of our walnuts. And 
we do not punish a swindler for ruining a thousand families, because 
we think swindling is a wholesome excitement to trade. 

90. But all true justice is vindictive to vice as it is rewarding to 
virtue. Only — and herein it is distinguished from personal revenge 
— it is vindictive of the wrong done, not of the wrong done to us. 
It is the national expression of deliberate anger, as of deliberate grati- 
tude ; it is not exemplary, or even corrective, but essentially retribu- 
tive; it is the absolute art of measured recompense, giving honor 
where honor is due, and shame where shame is due, and joy where 
joy is due, and pain where pain is due. It is neither educational, 
for men are to be educated by wholesome habit, not by rewards and 
punishments; nor is it preventive, for it is to be executed without 
regard to any consequences; but only for righteousness' sake a 
righteous nation does judgment and justice. But in this, as in all 
other instances, the rightness of the secondary passion depends on 
its being grafted on those two primary instincts, the love of order 
and of kindness, so that indignation itself is against the wounding of 
love. 



174 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

INDIFFERENCE TO HUMAN SUFFERING WHY? 

94. You will find that as of love, so of all the other passions, 
the right government and exaltation begins in that of the imagina- 
tion, which is lord over them. For to subdue the passions, which is 
thought so often to be the sum of duty respecting them, is possible 
enough to a proud dullness; but to excite them rightly, and make 
them strong for good, is the work of the unselfish imagination. 
It is constantly said that human nature is heartless. Do not believe 
it. Human nature is kind and generous ; but it is narrow and blind ; 
and can only with difficulty conceive anything but what it immedi- 
ately sees and feels. People would instantly care for others as well 
as themselves if only they could imagine others as well as themselves. 
Let a child fall into the river before the roughest man's eyes ; he will 
usually do what he can to get it out, even at some risk to himself; 
and all the town will triumph in the saving of one little life. Let 
the same man be shown that hundreds of children are dying of 
fever for want of some sanitary measure which it will cost him 
trouble to urge, and he will make no effort; and probably all the 
town would resist him if he did. So, also, fhe lives of many deserv- 
ing women are passed in a succession of petty anxieties about them- 
selves, and gleaning of minute interests and mean pleasures in their 
immediate circle, because they are never taught to make any effort, to 
look beyond it; or to know anything about the mighty world in 
which their lives are fading, like blades of bitter grass in fruitless 
fields. — Led. III. 

ALL THINGS TO HIM THAT BELIEVE. 

125. Every seventh day, if not oftener, the greater number of 
well-meaning persons in England thankfully receive from their 
teachers a benediction, couched in these terms : "The grace of our 
Lord Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy 
Ghost be with you." Now I do not know precisely what sense is 
attached in the English public mind to those expressions. But what 
I have to tell you positively is, that the three things do actually exist, 
and can be known if you care to know them, and possessed if you 
care to possess them ; and that another thing exists, beside these, of 
which we already know too much. 

First, by simply obeying the orders of the founder of your reli- 
gion, all grace, graciousness, or beauty and favor of gentle life, will 
be given to you in mind and body, in work and in rast. The grace 
of Christ exists, and can be had if you will. Secondly, as you know 
more and more of the created world, you will find that the true will 
of its Maker is that its creatures should be happy — that He has made 
everything beautiful in its time and its place, and that it is chiefly by 
the fault of men, when they are allowed the liberty of thwarting His 
laws, that creation groans or travails in pain. The love of God 
exists, and you may see it, and live in it if you will. Lastly, a spirit 



RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN ART 175 

does actually exist which teaches the ant her path, the bird her build- 
ing, and men, in an instinctive and marvelous way, whatever lovely 
arts and noble deeds are possible to them. Without it you can do no 
good thing. To the grief of it you can do many bad ones. In the 
possession of it is your peace and your power. 

And there is a fourth thing, of which we already know too much. 
There is an evil spirit whose dominion is in blindness and in coward- 
ice, as the dominion of the spirit of wisdom is in clear sight and in 
courage. 

And this blind and cowardly spirit is forever telling you that evil 
things are pardonable, and you shall not die for them, and that good 
things are impossible, and you need not live for them : and that gos- 
pel of his is now the loudest that is preached in your Saxon tongue. 
You will find some day, to your cost, if you believe the first part of it, 
that it is not true ; but you may never, if you believe the second part 
of it, find, to your gain, that also, untrue ; and, therefore, I pray you 
with all earnestness to prove, and know within your hearts, that all 
things lovely and righteous are possible for those who believe in their 
possibility, and who determine that, for their part, they will make 
every day's work contribute to them. Let every dawn of morning 
be to you as the beginning of life, and every setting sun be to you as 
its close — then let every one of these short lives leave its sure record 
of some kindly thing done for others — some goodly strength or 
knowledge gained for yourselves ; so, from day to day, and strength 
to strength, you shall build up indeed, by art, by thought, and by 
just will, an ecclesia of England, of which it shall not be said, "see 
■what manner of stones are here," but "see what manner of men." — 
Led. IV. 

TRUE ART TESTIFIES OF GOD. 

190. What art may do for scholarship, I have no right to conjec- 
ture ; but what scholarship may do for art, I may in all modesty tell 
you. Hitherto, great artists, though always gentlemen, have yet 
been too exclusively craftsmen. Art has been less thoughtful than 
we suppose ; it has taught much, but much, also, falsely. Many of 
the greatest pictures are enigmas; others, beautiful toys; others, 
harmful and corrupting toys. In the loveliest there is something 
weak ; in the greatest there is something guilty. And this is the new 
thing that may come to pass — that scholars may resolve to teach also 
with the silent power of the arts ; and that some among you may so 
learn and use them, that pictures may be painted which shall not be 
enigmas any more, but open teachings of what can no otherwise be 
so well shown; which shall not be fevered or broken visions any 
more, but shall be filled with the indwelling light of self-possessed 
imagination ; which shall not be stained or enfeebled any more by 
evil passion, but glorious with the strength and chastity of noble 
human love ; and which shall no more degrade or disguise the work 
of God in heaven, but testify of Him as here dwelling with men, and 
walking with them- not angry, in the garden of the earth. — 
Led. VII. 



XII 

THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
Ten Lectures at Oxford University. (1872.) 

The subject of this volume is "The Relation of Natural Science 
to Art." 

Ruskin did not regard it as among the best written of his works, 
but it was the choice of them all to Carlyle, and is certainly thor- 
oughly characteristic of the Author, striking at once at the base of 
what he conceives to be popular errors. 

Mr. Harrison, speaking of the title, says : — "It was so named in the 
way of fancy, in that it contains much about birds, at least twelve 
different species being mentioned, and something about eagles. . . . 
But, as usual, there is much besides the primary subject in this 
course — . . . two young ladies studying astronomy, forty 
texts from the Bible, the dangers of studying anatomy, dancing at 
the theatre, the famine, dwellings for the working classes, drawing 
from the nude," etc. 

The lectures are spoken in more learned terms than those given to 
popular audiences but they iare not the less pertinent to men and 
women in all grades of life, and at all periods of time. 

KNOW THYSELF. 

22. And, above all, this is true of man ; for every other creature 
is compelled by its instinct to learn its own appointed lesson, and 
must centralize its perception in its own being. But man has the 
choice of stooping in science beneath himself, and striving in science 
beyond himself; and the "Know thyself" is, for him, not a law to 
which he must in peace submit ; but a precept which of all others is 
the most painful to understand, and the most difficult to fulfill. 
Most painful to understand, and humiliating; and this alike, 
whether it be held to refer to the knowledge beneath us or above. 
For, singularly enough, men are always most conceited of the 
meanest science : — 

"Doth the Eagle know what is In, the pit, 
Or wilt thou go ask the Mole?" 

176 



RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN ART 177 

It is Just those who grope with the mole and cling with the bat, 
who are vainest of their sight and of their wings. 

23. "Know thyself/' but can it indeed be sophia, — can it be the 
noble wisdom, which thus speaks to science? Is not this rather, 
you will ask, the voice of the lower virtue of prudence, concerning 
itself with right conduct, whether for the interests of this world or of 
the future? Does not sophia regard all that is above and greater 
than man ; and by so much as we are forbidden to bury ourselves in 
the mole's earth heap, by so much also, are we not urged to raise our- 
selves towards the stars? — Lect II. 

BE SUFFICIENT FOR THYSELF. 

77. You have not often heard me use that word "independence." 
And, in the sense in which of late it has been accepted, you have 
never heard me use it but with contempt. For the true strength of 
every human soul it to be dependent on as many nobler as it can 
discern, and to be depended upon, by as many inferior as it can 
reach. 

But to-day I used the word in a widely different sense. I think 
you must have felt, in what amplification I was able to give you of 
the idea of Wisdom as an unselfish influence in Art and Science, how 
the highest skill and knowledge were founded in human tenderness, 
and that the kindly Art- wisdom which rejoices in the habitable parts 
of the earth, is only another form of the lofty Scientific charity, 
which "rejoices in the truth." And as the first order of Wisdom is to 
know thyself — though the least creature that can be known — so the 
first order of Charity is to be sufficient for thyself, though the least 
creature that can be sufficed ; and thus contented and appeased, to be 
girded and strong for the ministry to others. If sufficient to thy 
day is the evil thereof, how much more should be the good! — 
Lect. IV. 

SIMPLICITY AND CONTENTMENT. 

81. My endeavour, will be to point out to you how in the best wis* 
dom, that there may be happy advance, there must first be happy 
contentment; that, in one sense, we must always be entering its 
kingdom as a little child, and pleased yet for a time not to put away 
childish things. And while I hitherto have endeavoured only to 
show how modesty and gentleness of disposition purified Art and 
Science, by permitting us to recognize the superiority of the work of 
others to our own — today, on the contrary, I wish to indicate for you 
the uses of infantile self-satisfaction ; and to show you that it is by no 
error or excess in our nature, by no corruption or distortion of our 
being, that we are disposed to take delight in the little things that we 
can do ourselves, more than in the great things done by other people. 
So only that we recognize the littleness and the greatness, it is as 
much a part of true Temperance to be pleased with the little that we 



178 TEE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

know, and the little that we can do, as with the little that we have. 
On the one side Indolence, on the other Covetousness, are as much 
to be blamed, with respect to our Arts, as our possessions ; and every 
man is intended to find an exquisite personal happiness in his own 
small skill, just as he is intended to find happiness in his own small 
house or garden, while he respects, without coveting, the grandeur of 
larger domains, — Led. V. 

GREATER PLEASURE IN SMALL THINGS. 

82. Nay, more than this : by the wisdom of Nature, it has been 
appointed that more pleasure may be taken in small things than in 
great, and more in rude Art than in the finest. Were it otherwise, 
we might be disposed to complain of the narrow limits which have 
been set to the perfection of human skill. 

I do not doubt that you are greatly startled at my saying that 
greater pleasure is to be received from inferior Art than from the 
finest. But what do you suppose makes all men look back to the 
time of childhood with so much regret, (if their childhood has been, 
in any moderate degree, healthy or peaceful) ? That rich charm, 
which the least possession had for us, was in consequence of the poor- 
ness of our treasures. That miraculous aspect of the nature around 
us, was because we had seen little, and knew less. Every increased 
possession loads us with a new weariness ; every piece of new knowl- 
edge diminishes the faculty of admiration ; and Death is at last ap- 
pointed to take us from a scene in which, if we were to stay longer, 
no gift could satisfy us, and no miracle surprise. — Led. V. 

SPIRITUAL SIGHT. 

99. A great physiologist said to me the other day — it was in the 
rashness of controversy, and ought not to be remembered as a de- 
liberate assertion, therefore I do not give his name — still he did say 
— that sight was ''altogether mechanical." The words simply 
meant, if they meant anything, that all his physiology had never 
taught him the difference between eyes and telescopes. Sight is an 
absolutely spiritual phenomenon ; accurately, and only, to be so de- 
fined: and the "Let there be light," is as much, when you under- 
stand it, the ordering of intelligence, as the ordering of vision. It 
is the appointment of change of what had been else only a mechani- 
cal effluence from things unseen to things unseeing, — from stars 
that did not shine to earth that could not perceive; — the change, I 
say, of that blind vibration into the glory of the sun and moon for 
human eyes; so rendering possible also the communication out of 
the unfathomable truth, of that portion of truth which is good for 
us, and animating to us, and is set to rule over the day and night 0"^ 
our joy and sorrow. — Led. VI. . 



RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN ART 179 

121. How much need, therefore, that we should learn first of all 
what eyes are; and what vision they ought to possess — science of 
sight granted only to clearness of soul; but granted in its fulness 
even to mortal eyes : for though, after the skin, worms may destroy 
their body, happy the pure in heart, for they, yet in their flesh, shall 
see the Light of Heaven, and know the will of God. — Lect. VI. 

PRAYING FOR LIGHT. 

115. On any morning of the year, how many pious supplications, 
do you suppose, are uttered throughout educated Europe for 
''light?" How many lips at least pronounce the word, and, perhaps, 
in the plurality of instances, with some distinct idea attached to it? 
It is true the speakers employ it only as a metaphor. But why is 
their language thus metaphorical? If they mean merely to ask for 
spiritual knowledge or guidance, why not say so plainly instead of 
using this jaded figure of speech? No boy goes to his father when 
he wants to be taught, or helped, and asks his father to give him 
^aight." 

He asks what he wants, advice or protection. Why are not we 
also content to ask our Father for what we want, in plain English? 

The metaphor, you will answer, is put into our mouths, and felt 
to be a beautiful and necessary one. 

I admit it. In your educational series, firet of all examples of 
modern art, is the best engraving I could find of the picture which, 
founded on that idea of Christ's being the Giver of Light, contains, 
I believe, the most true and useful piece of religious vision which 
realistic art has yet embodied. But why is the metaphor so neces- 
sary, or, rather, how far is it a metaphor at all? Do you think the 
words "Light of the World" mean only "Teacher or Guide of the 
World?" When the Sun of Justice is said to rise with health in its 
wings, do you suppose the image only means the correction of error? 
Or does it even mean so much? The Light of Heaven is needed to 
do that perfectly. But what we are to pray for is the Light of the 
World; nay, the Light "that lighteth every man that cometh into 
the world." 

116. You will find that it is no metaphor — nor has it ever 
heen so. 

To the Persian, the Greek, and the Christian, the sense of the 
power of the God of Light, has been one and the same. That power 
is not merely in teaching or protecting, but in the enforcement of 
purity of body, and of equity or justice in the heart; and this, ob- 
serve, not heavenly purity, nor final justice; but, now, and here, 
actual purity in the midst of the world's foulness, — practical justice 
in the midst of the world's iniquity. And the physical strength of 
the organ of sight, — the physical purity of the flesh, the actual love 
of sweet light and stainless colour, — are the necessary signs, real. 



i8o THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

inevitable, and visible, of the prevailing presence, with any nation, 
or in any house, of the "Light that lighteth every man that cometh 
into the world." — LecL VI. 

THE GUAEDLA-NSHIP OP LOVE. 

169. All of you who have ever read your Gospels carefully must 
have wondered, sometimes, what could be the meaning of thos© 
words, — "If any speak against the Son of Man it shall be forgiven j 
but if against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven, neither in 
this world nor in the next." 

The passage may have many meanings which I do not know; 
but one meaning I know positively, and I tell you so just as frankly 
as I would that I knew the meaning of a verse in Homer. 

Those of you who still go to chapel say every day your creed; and, 
I suppose, too often, less and less every day believing it. Now, you 
may cease to believe two articles of it, and, — admitting Christianity 
to be true, — still be forgiven. But I can tell you — you must not 
cease to believe the third! 

You begin by saying that you believe in an Almighty Father. 
Well, you may entirely lose the sense of that Fatherhood, and yet 
be forgiven. 

You go on to say that you believe in a Saviour Son. You may en- 
tirely lose the sense of that Sonship, and yet be forgiven. 

But the third article — disbelieve if you dare ! 

"I believe in the Holy Ghost, The Lord and Giver of Life." 

Disbelieve that ! and your own being is degraded into the state of 
dust driven by the wind; and the elements of dissolution have en- 
tered your very heart and soul. 

All Nature, with one voice — with one glory, is set to teach you 
reverence for the life communicated to you from the Father of 
Spirits. The song of birds, and their plumage ; the scent of flowers, 
their colour, their very existence, are in direct connection with the 
mystery of that communicated life : and all the strength, and all the 
arts of men, are measured by, and founded upon, their reverence for 
the passion, and their guardianship of the purity, of Love. — Led. 
VIIL 

LIVING IN HONOR — THE SECRET OF POWER. 

171. My friends, let me very strongly recommend you to give up 
that hope of finding the principle of life in dead bodies ; but to take 
all pains to keep the life pure and holy in the living bodies you have 
got; and, farther, not to seek your national amusement in the 
destruction of animals, nor your national safety in the destruction of 
men; but to look for all your joy to kindness, and for all your 
strength to domestic faith, and law of ancestral honour. Perhaps 
you will not now any more think it strange that in beginning your 
natural history studies in this place, I mean to teach you heraldry. 



RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN ART i8i 

but not anatomy. For, as you learn to read the shields, and remem- 
ber the stories, of the great houses of England, and find how all the 
arts that glorified them were founded on the passions that inspired, 
you will learn assuredly, that the utmost secret of national power i^ in 
' living with honour, and the utmost secrets of human art are in gen- 
tleness and truth. — Lect VIII. 

DARWINISM. 

185, Respecting the origin of these variously awkward, imper- 
fectly, or grotesquely developed phases of form and power, you need 
not at present inquire : in all probability the race of man is appointed 
to live in wonder, and in acknowledgment of ignorance ; but if ever 
he is to know any of the secrets of his own or of brutal existence, it 
will surely be through discipline of virtue, not through inquisitive- 
ness of science. I have just used the expression, *'had Darwinism 
been true," implying its fallacy more positively than is justifiable in 
the present state of our knowledge; but very positively I can say to 
you that I have never heard yet one logical argument in its favour, 
and I have heard, and read, many that were beneath contempt. 
For instance, by the time you have copied one or two of your exer- 
cises on the feather of the halcyon, you will be more interested in the 
construction and disposition of plume-filaments than heretofore ; and 
you may perhaps, refer, in hope of help, to Mr. Darwin's account of 
the peacock's feather. I went to it myself, hoping to learn some of 
the existing laws of life which regulate the local disposition of the 
colour. But none of these appear to be known ; and I am informed 
only that peacocks have grown to be peacocks out of brown pheasants, 
because the young feminine brown pheasants like fine feathers. 
Whereupon I say to myself, "Then either there was a distinct species 
of brown pheasants originally born with a taste for fine feathers; 
and therefore with remarkable eyes in their heads, — which would be 
a much more wonderful distinction of species than being born with 
remarkable eyes in their tails, — or else all pheasants would have been 
peacocks by this time!" And I trouble myself no more about the 
Darwinian theory. — Lect. IX. 

BLESSED ARE PEACEMAKERS. 

204. Have you ever thought seriously of the meaning of that 
blessing given to the peacemakers? People are always expecting 
to get peace in heaven ; but you know whatever peace they get there 
will be ready-made. Whatever making of peace they can be blest 
for, must be on the earth here : not the taking of arms against, but 
the building of nests amidst, its "sea of troubles." Difficult enough, 
you think? Perhaps so, but I do not see that any of us try. We 
complain of the want of many things — we want votes, we want 
liberty, we want amusement, we want money. Which of us feels, 
or knows, that he wants peace? 



i82 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

205. There are two ways of getting it, if you do want it. The 
first is wholly in your own power ; to make yourselves nests of pleas- 
ant thoughts. Those are nests on the sea indeed, but safe beyond all 
others; only they need much art in the building. None of us yet 
know, for none of us have yet been taught in early youth, what fairy 
palaces we may build of beautiful thought — proof against all adver- 
sity. Bright fancies, satisfied memories, noble histories, faithful 
sayings, treasure-houses of precious and restful thoughts, which care 
cannot disturb, nor pain make gloomy, nor poverty take away from 
us — houses built without hands, for our souls to live in. — Led. IX. 

DUTY OF SCIENCE AND ART, 

206. Science does its duty, not in telling us the causes of spots in 
the sun ; but in explaining to us the laws of our own life, and the 
consequences of their violation. Art does its duty, not in filling 
monster galleries with frivolous, or dreadful, or indecent pictures; 
but in completing the comforts and refining the pleasures of daily 
occurrence, and familiar service: and literature does its duty, not in 
wasting our hours in political discussion, or in idle fiction; but in 
raising our fancy to the height of what may be noble, honest, and 
felicitous in actual life : — in giving us, though we may ourselves be 
poor and unknown, the companionship of the wisest fellow-spirits of 
every age and country, — and in aiding the communication of clear 
thoughts and faithful purposes, among distant nations, which will 
at last breathe calm upon the sea of lawless passion, and change into 
such halcyon days the winter of the world, that the birds of the air 
may have their nests in peace, and the Son of Man, where to lay his 
head. — Lecf. IX. 

COMPETE FOR THE FUTURE. 

212. I want you to compete, not for the praise of what you know, 
but for the praise of what you become ; and to compete only in that 
great school, where death is the examiner, and God the judge. For 
you will find, if you look into your own hearts, that the two great 
delights, in loving and praising, and the two great thirsts, to be loved 
and praised, are the roots of all that is strong in the deeds of men, 
and happy in their repose. — Led. X. 

LIFE ITS ORIGIN NOT IN THE DUST. 

240. I warned you in my former lecture against the base curi- 
osity of seeking for the origin of life in the dust; in earth instead 
of heaven : how much more must I warn you against forgetting the 
true origin of the life that is in your own souls, of that good which 
you have heard with your ears, and your fathers have told you. 
You buy the picture of the Virgin as furniture for your rooms ; but 
you despise the religion, and you reject the memory, of those who 



RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN ART 183 

have taught you to love the aspect of whatsoever things and creatures 
are good and pure: and too many of you, entering into life, are 
ready to think, to feel, to act, as the men bid you who are incapable 
of worship, as they are of creation ; — whose power is only in destruc- 
tion; whose gladness only in disdain; whose glorying is in their 
shame. You know well, I should think, by this time, that I am not 
one to seek to conceal from you any truth of nature, or supersti- 
tiously decorate for you any form of faith; but I trust deeply — 
(and I will strive, for my poor part, wholly, so to help you in 
steadfastness of heart) — that you, the children of the Christian 
chivalry .... may not stoop to become as these, whose thoughts 
are but to invent new foulness with which to blaspheme the story of 
Christ, and to destroy the noble works and laws that have been 
founded in His name. 

Will you not rather go around about this England, and tell the 
towers thereof, and mark well her bulwarks, and consider her 
palaces, that you may tell it to the generation following? Will you 
not rather honour with all your strength, with all your obedience, 
with all your holy love and never-ending worship, the princely sires, 
and pure maids, and nursing mothers, who have bequeathed and 
blest your life? — that so, for you also, and for your children, the 
days of strength, and the light of memory, may be long in this 
lovely land which the Lord your God has given you. — Led. X. 



XIII 

ARIADNE FLORENTINA. 

Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving. 
(1872.) 

These lectures which, with an appendix, form a volume of 160 
pages, were delivered at the University of Oxford. They are techni- 
cal in their treatment and do not offer much to our method of selec- 
tion. Yet, even here, devoted as these lectures are to the technique 
of the Art of Engraving, Ruskin finds his highest ideals in religious 
truth. They treat of the following subjects, and are illustrated with 
many specimens of the art : — 

1. Definition of the Art of Engraving. 

2. The relation of Engraving to other arts. 

3. The technics of Wood Engraving. 

4. The technics of Metal Engraving. 

5. German Schools of Engraving. 

6. Florentine Schools of Engraving. 

The lectures are fine examples of Ruskin's rare powers as a close 
observer and a critic of all that constitute artistic worth. All the 
treasures of art are unfolded to his mind, as the flowers of Italy at 
the feet of the goddess Flora. 

The Art of Engraving, which to the uninitiated appears as a 
product of deftness and skill of the hand, becomes a world of beauty 
and truth. History and Poetry, and above all the Scriptures, fur- 
nish abundant illustration of his themes, or are themselves ex- 
pounded, as he tells the story of the schools of the Engravers' craft. 



184 



XIV 

THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 

Ten Chapters. (1877-8.) 

In his preface to this volume the Author says: — "This book is 
■called 'The Laws of Fesole' because the entire system of possible 
Christian Art is founded on the principles established by Giotto in 
Florence, he receiving them from the Attic Greeks through Cimbue, 
the last of their disciples, and grafting them on the existing art of 
the Etruscans, the race from which both his master and he were 
descended. . . . And the purpose of this book is to teach . . . 
the elements of these Christian laws, as distinguished from the infidel 
laws of the spuriously classic school." 

The book with its twelve plates, illustrating right lines, curves, 
shields, plumage, groups of circles, landscape outline, lights and 
shade, etc., ought to be published separately for use of schools and 
classes. Every young student of elementary art should be encour- 
aged, if not required, to study it. 

Directed, as it is, exclusively to these studies, it does not offer much 
room for treatment of moral principles, nevertheless it is true to 
them, as we may see in the following: 

birds' nests better than pictures op birds' nests. 

6. Fix this in your mind as the guiding principle of all right 
practical labor, and source of all healthful life energy, — that your 
art is to be the praise of something you love. It may be only the 
praise of a shell or a stone ; it may be the praise of a hero ; it may be 
the praise of God: your rank as a living creature is determined by 
the height and breadth of your love, but, be you small or great, what 
healthy art is possible to you must be the expression of your true 
delight in a real thing, better than the art. You may think, per- 
haps, that a bird's nest by William Hunt is better than a real bird's 
nest. We indeed pay a large sum for the one, and scarcely look for, 
or save, the other. But it would be better for us that all pictures in 
the world perished, than that the birds should cease to build nests. — 
€h.l. 

i8s 



i86 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

APHORISMS. 

1. The greatest art represents every thing with absolute sincer- 
ity, as far as it is able. But it chooses the best things to represent, 
and it places them in the best order in which they can be seen. 
You can only judge of what is best, in process of time, by the better- 
ing of your own character. What is true, you can learn now, if you 
will. 

If the picture is beautiful, copy it as it is; if ugly, let it 
alone. Only Heaven, and Death, know what it was. — Ch. 2. 

BEAUTY IN NATURAL THINGS. 

16. The final definition of Beauty is, the power in any thing of 
delighting an intelligent soul by its appearance — power given to it 
by the Maker of Souls. The perfect beauty of Man is summed up 
in the Arabian exclamation, "Praise be to Him who created thee!" 
and the perfect beauty of all natural things summed in the Angel's 
promise, ''Good will towards men." — Ch. 7. 

ELEMENTS OF HUMAN ART. 

40. Counting less than most men, what future days may bring 
or deny me, I am thankful to be permitted, . . . with all the 
force of which my mind is capable, the lesson I have endeavored 
to teach through my past life, that this fair tree Igdrasil of Human 
Art can only flourish when its dew is affection, its air devotion, the 
rock of its roots. Patience, and its sunshine, God. — Closing words 
of Ch, 10, 



XV 

ARROWS OF THE CHACE. 
Two Vols. Vol. I. (1880.) 

These two volumes, Ruskin tells us, consists of a "series of letters 
ranging broadly over forty years of my life." In the year 1889 they 
were edited by an Oxford friend and a list of the letters will be found 
in any good edition of Ruskin's Works, with the date and occasion 
of their first publication. They embrace a very wide range of sub- 
jects which are arranged under two general heads, Volume I, being 
"Letters on Art and Science;" Volume 2, "Letters on Politics, Econo- 
my and Miscellaneous Matters." 

"Since the letters cost me much trouble, since they interrupted me 
in pleasant work which was usually liable to take harm by interrup- 
tion, and since they were likely almost, in the degree of their force, 
to be refused by the editors of adverse journals, I never was tempted 
into writing a word for the public press, unless concerning matters 
which I had niuch at heart. And the issue is, therefore, that the 
two following volumes contain very nearly the indices of everything 
I have deeply cared for during the last forty years. . . . 
Whether I am spared to put into act anything here designed for my 
country's help, or am shielded by death from the sight of her 
remediless sorrow, I have already done for her as much service as she 
has will to receive, by laying before her facts vital to her existence, 
and unalterable by her power, in words of which not one has been 
warped by interest nor weakened by fear; and which are as pure 
from selfish passion as if they were spoken already from another 
world." 

These words from the "Author's Preface," written when he was 
past sixty, are characteristic of Ruskin. They reveal the intense 
realty of all his battles for righteousness, and they also show that 
what he has said in these letters are the expression of profound con- 
viction and long experience. 

In the very nature of them there is not much that can be selected 
for the purpose of this volume. The reader will notice that the set 

187 



i88 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

of subjects contained in the first volume belong to this group, while 
the second volume will be referred to in Book V, 

Only one selection is given here and this requires the explanation 
that it is a description of Holman Hunt's famous picture "The 
Light of the World." 

The Author of this volume remembers well the profound impres- 
sion made upon his mind on viewing Hunt's great work but it is a 
question whether Ruskin's interpretation of it is not greater even 
than the picture. 

THE LIGHT OP THE WORLD. 

The legend beneath it is the beautiful verse, "Behold I stand at 
the door and knock. If any man hear my voice, and open the door, 
I will come into him, and will sup with him, and he with me." — 
Rev. Hi : 20. On the left-hand side of the pictures is seen this door 
of the human soul. It is fast barred ; its bars and nails are rusty ; it 
is knitted and bound to its stanchions by creeping tendrils of ivy, 
showing that it has never been opened. A bat hovers about it; its 
threshold is overgrown with brambles, nettles, and fruitless corn — 
the wild grass "whereof the mower filleth not his hand, nor he that 
bindeth the sheaves his bosom." Christ approaches it in the night- 
time — Christ, in his everlasting offices of prophet, priest, and king. 
He wears the white robe, representing the power of the Spirit upon 
him; the jewelled robe and breast-plate, representing the sacerdotal 
investiture; the rayed crown of gold, interwoven with the crown of 
thorns ; not dead thorns, but now bearing soft leaves, for the healing 
of the nations. 

Now, when Christ enters any human heart, he bears with him a 
two-fold light: first, the light of conscience, which displays past sin, 
and afterwards the light of peace, the hope of salvation. The lan- 
tern, carried in Christ's left hand, is this light of conscience. Its 
fire is red and fierce; it falls only on the closed door, on the weeds 
which encumber it, and on an apple shaken from one of the trees of 
the orchard, thus marking that the entire awakening of the con- 
science is not merely to committed, but to hereditary guilt. 

The light is suspended by a chain, wrapt about the wrist of the 
figure, showing that the light which reveals sin appears to the sinner 
also to chain the hand of Christ. 

The light which proceeds from the head of the figure, on the con- 
trary, is that of the hope of salvation, it springs from the crown of 
thorns, and, though itself sad, subdued, and full of softness, is yet so 
powerful that it entirely melts into the glow of the forms of the 
leaves and boughs, which it crosses, showing that every earthly 
object must be hidden by this light, where its sphere extends. 

I believe there are few persons on whom the picture thus justly 
understood, will not produce a deep impression. For my own part, 
I think it one of the very noblest works of sacred art ever produced 
in this or any other age. — Letter, May 5, 1854- 



XVI 

THE ART OF ENGLAND. 

Six Lectures at Oxford. (1883.) 

These lectures were delivered before the University of Oxford when 
iRuskin was sixty-four years of age. The subject treated, and the 
manner of treatment suggest that it is practically a continuation of 
"Modern Painters." The work abounds in terse and critical sen- 
tences and although it is all contained in about 130 pages, including 
an appendix and index, it is one of the most instructive and compre- 
hensive studies of all his works. Taken as a whole it is a strong 
defence of Morals and Religion against the tendency of the errors of 
scientific men of that time. In it the Scriptures are copiously 
quoted. Theological, as well as Art Students should make a study 
of this work. 

THE MYSTERY OF SACRIFICE. 

The great mystery of the idea of Sacrifice itself, which has been 
manifested as one united and solemn instinct by all thoughtful and 
affectionate races, since the wide world became peopled, is founded 
on the secret truth of benevolent energy which all men who have 
tried to gain it have learned — that you cannot save men from death 
but by facing it for them nor from sin but by resisting it for them. 
It is, on the contrary, the favourite, and the worst falsehood of 
modern infidel morality, that you serve your fellow-creatures best 
by getting a percentage out of their pockets, and will best provide 
for starving multitudes by regaling yourselves. Some day or other 
— probably now very soon — too probably by heavy afflictions of the 
State, we shall be taught that it is not so ; and that all the true good 
and glory even of this world — not to speak of any that is to come, 
must be bought still, as it always has been, with our toil, and with 
our tears. That is the final doctrine, the inevitable one, not of 
Christianity only, but of all Heroic Faith and Heroic Being; and 
the first trial questions of a true soul to itself must always be, — 
Have I a religion, have I a country, have I a love, that I am ready 
to die for? 

That is the Doctrine of Sacrifice; the faith in which Isaac was 
bound, in which Iphigenia died, in which the great army of mar- 
tyrs have suffered, and by which all victories in the cause of justice 

189 



190 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

and happiness have been gained by the men who became more than 
conquerors, through Him that loved them. 

And yet there is a deeper and stranger sacrifice in the system of 
this creation than theirs. To resolute self-denial, and to adopted 
and accepted suffering, the reward is in the conscience sure, and in 
Ihe gradual advance and predominance of good, practically and to 
all men visible. But what shall we say of involuntary suffering, — 
the misery of the poor and the simple, the agony of the helpless 
and the innocent, and the perishing, as it seems, in vain, and the 
mother weeping for the children of whom she knows only that they 
are not? — Led. I. 

PAIN AS A SOURCE OP PLEASURE. 

I saw it lately given as one of the incontrovertible discoveries of 
modern science, that all our present enjoyments were only the out- 
come of an infinite series of pain. I do not know how far the state- 
ment fairly represented — but it announced as incapable of contra- 
diction — this melancholy theory. If such a doctrine is indeed 
abroad among you, let me comfort some, at least, with its absolute 
denial. That in past aeons, the pain suffered throughout the living 
universe passes calculation, is true ; that it is infinite, is untrue ; and 
that all our enjoyments are based on it, contemptibly untrue. For, 
on the other hand, the pleasure felt through the living universe dur- 
ing past ages in incalculable also, and in higher magnitudes. Our 
own talents, enjoyments, and prosperities, are the outcome of that 
happiness with its energies, not of the death that ended them. So 
manifestly is this so, that all men of hitherto widest reach in 
natural science and logical thought have been led to fix their minds 
only on the innumerable paths of pleasure, and ideals of beauty, 
which are traced on the scroll of creation, and are no more tempted 
to arraign as unjust, or even lament as unfortunate the essential 
equivalent of sorrow, than in the seven-fold glories of sunrise to 
deprecate the mingling of shadow with its light. 

This, however, though it has always been the sentiment of the 
healthiest natural philosophy, has never, as you well know, been the 
doctrine of Christianity. That religion, as it comes to us with the 
promise of a kingdom in which there shall be no more Death, neither 
sorrow nor crying, so it has always brought with it the confession of 
calamity to be at present in patience of mystery endured; and not 
by us only, but apparently for our sakes, by the lower creatures, for 
whom it is inconceivable that any good should be the final goal of 
ill. Toward these, the one lesson we have to learn is that of pity. 
For all human loss and pain, there is no comfort, no interpretation 
worth a thought, except only in the doctrine of the Resurrection ; — 
of which doctrine, remember, it is an immutable historical fact that 
all the beautiful work, and all the happy existence of mankind, 
hitherto, has depended on, or consisted in, the hope of it. 



RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN ART 191 

THE TRUE AND THE FALSE IN ROMANCE. 

And here I must at once pray you, as I have prayed you to remove 
all associations of falsehood from the word romance, so also to clear 
them out of your faith, when you begin the study of mythology. 
Never confuse a Myth with a Lie, — nay, you must even be cautious 
how far you even permit it to be called a fable. Take the frequent- 
est and simplest of myths for instance — that of Fortune and her 
wheel. Enid does not herself conceive, or in the least intend the 
hearers of her song to conceive, that there stands anywhere in the 
universe a real woman, turning an adamantine wheel whose revolu- 
tions have power over human destiny. She means only to assert, 
under that image, more clearly the law of Heaven's continual deal- 
ing with man, — "He hath put down the mighty from their seat and 
hath exalted the humble and meek." — Led. II. 

WOMANHOOD, CHILDHOOD AND CHRISTIANITY. 

But from the moment when the spirit of Christianity had been 
entirely interpreted to the Western races, the sanctity of woman- 
hood worshipped in the Madonna, and the sanctity of childhood in 
unity with that of Christ, became the light of every honest hearth, 
and the joy of every pure and chastened soul. Yet the traditions of 
art subject, and the vices of luxury which developed themselves in 
the following (fourteenth) century, prevented the manifestation of 
this new force in domestic life for two centuries more; and then at 
last in the child angels of Luca, Mino of Fesole, Luini, Angelico, 
Perugino, and the first days of Raphael, it expressed itself as the one 
pure and sacred passion which protected Christendom from the ruin 
of the Renaissance. 

Nor has it since failed ; and whatever disgrace or blame obscured 
the conception of the later Flemish and incipient English schools, 
the children, whether in the pictures of Rubens, Rembrandt, Van- 
dyke, or Sir Joshua, were always beautiful. An extremely dark 
period indeed follows, leading to and persisting in the French Revo- 
lution, and issuing in the merciless manufacturing fury, which 
today grinds children to dust between millstones, and tears them to 
pieces on engine-wheels, — against which rises round us. Heaven be 
thanked, again the protest and the power of Christianity, restoring 
the fields of the quiet earth to the steps of her infancy. — Led. IV. 

DESIGN IN CREATION. 

To my own mind, there is no more beautiful proof of benevolent 
design in the creation of the earth, than the exact adaptation of its 
materials to the art-power of man. The plasticity and constancy 
under fire of clay ; the ductility and fusibility of gold and iron ; the 
consistent softness of marble; and the fibrous toughness of wood, 
are in each material carried to the exact degree which renders them 



192 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

provocative of skill by their resistance, and full of reward for it by 
their compliance: so that the delight with which, after sufficiently 
intimate study of the methods of manual work, the student ought to 
regard the excellence of a masterpiece, is never merely the admira- 
tion of difficulties overcome, but the sympathy, in a certain sense, 
both with the enjoyment of the workman in managing a substance 
so pliable to his will, and with the worthiness, fitness, and obedience 
of the material itself, which at once invites his authority, and 
rewards his concessions. — Led. V. 

THE LAW OF WISDOM. 

There never has been, there never can be, any other law respecting 
the wisdom that is from above, than this one precept, — "Buy the 
Truth, and sell it not." It is to be costly to you — of labour and 
patience; and you are never to sell it, but to guard, and to give. — 
Led. VI. 

LESSONS OP THE CLOUDS. 

On the repose of mind, I say; and there is a singular physical 
truth illustrative of that spiritual life and peace which I must yet 
detain you by indicating in the subject of our study to-day. You 
see how this foulness of false imagination represents, in every line, 
the clouds not only as monstrous, — but tumultuous. Now all lovely 
clouds, remember, are quiet clouds, — not merely quiet in appear- 
ance, because of their greater height and distance, but quiet actually, 
fixed for hours, it may be, in the same form and place. I have seen 
a fair-weather cloud high over Coniston Old Man, — not on the hill, 
observe, but a vertical mile above it, — stand motionless, — change- 
less, — for twelve hours together. From four o'clock in the after- 
noon of one day I watched it through the night by the north twilight, 
till the dawn struck it with full crimson, at four of the follow- 
ing July morning. What is glorious and good in the heavenly 
cloud, you can, if you will, bring also into your lives, — which are 
indeed like it, in their vanishing, but how much more in their not 
vanishing, till the morning take them to itself. As this ghastly 
phantasy of death is to the mighty clouds of which it is written, 
"The chariots of God are twenty thousand, even thousands of 
angels," are the fates to which your passion may condemn you, — or 
your resolution raise. You may drift with the phrenzy of the 
whirlwind, — or be fastened for your part in the pacified eflfulgence 
of the sky. Will you not let your lives be lifted up, in fruitful rain 
for the earth, in scatheless snow to the sunshine, — so blessing the 
years to come when the surest knowledge of England shall be of the 
will of her heavenly Father, and the purest art of England be the 
inheritance of her simplest children? — Led. VI. 



XVII 

OUR FATHERS HAVE TOLD US. 

The Bible of Amiens. 
4 Chapters and 3 Appendices. (1880-5.) 

This little work of 140 pages is valuable as a sketch of the early 
history of Christendom, Mr. Ruskin says it was written "at 
the request of a young English governess that I would write some 
pieces of history which her pupils could gather some good out of." 

No explanation is given of the double title, but it may be pre- 
sumed that "The Bible of Amiens" was designed as one section of a 
more extended work under the general title. There are, indeed, 
two Supplements bearing the titles of "The Shrine of the Slaves" 
and "The Place of the Dragons" which fill nearly sixty pages. 

The work, as a whole, is decidedly religious in tone and indicates 
a more settled conviction, and less of doubt in Ruskin's mind, on 
questions — not of theological opinion — but of settled faith in the 
fundamental truths of Christianity. 

On this matter it is worth while to quote Collingwood, who says: 
"He (Ruskin) had come out of the phase of doubt, into acknowl- 
edgment of the real and wholesome influence of serious religion; 
into an attitude of mind in which, without unsaying anything he 
had said against narrowness of creed and inconsistency of practice, 
he regarded the fear of God and the revelation of the Divine Spirit 
as great facts, as motives not to be neglected in the study of history, 
and the groundwork of civilisation and the guide of progress."^ 

Although written "for boys and girls" it must be admitted that 
this book is rather complex reading, mixing much of history, tradi- 
tion, and learning, with some simple stories of early Christendom. 
But it is a really valuable work. The centre of it is the French 
Venice Amiens with its historic Cathedral and Statuary, — all the 
work of artists who made Christianity their theme, and have left 
their witnesses in marble, — not only representing the faiths and 

i"Life of John Ruskin," p. 359. 

193 



194 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

virtues of the Bible, but almost all its greater characters, and most 
of the books of the Bible. 

The work is devoted to three things which Ruskin held sacred. 
''These three," he says, ''Art, History, and Philosophy, are 
each but one part of the Heavenly Wisdom, which sees not as man 
seeth, but with Eternal Charity; and because she rejoices not in 
Iniquity, therefore rejoices in the Truth. 

For true knowledge is of Virtues only: of poisons and vices, it is 
Hecate who teaches, not Athena. And of all wisdom, chiefly the 
Politician's must consist in this divine Prudence; it is not, indeed, 
always necessary for men to know the virtues of their friends, or 
their masters; since the friend will still manifest, and the master 
use. But woe to the Nation which is too cruel to cherish the virtue 
of its subjects, and too cowardly to recognize that of its enemies!" 

JEEOME AND THE BIBLE. 

36. The candour which lies at the basis of his character has 
given us one sentence of his own, respecting that change, which is 
worth some volumes of ordinary confessions. "I left, not only par- 
ents and kindred, but the accustomed luxuries of delicate life." 
The words throw full light on what, to our less courageous temper, 
seems the exaggerated reading by the early converts of Christ's words 
to them — "He that loveth father or mother more than me, is not 
worthy of me." We are content to leave, for much lower interests, 
either father or mother, and do not see the necessity of any farther 
sacrifice: we should know more of ourselves and of Christianity if 
we oftener sustained what St. Jerome found the most searching 
trial. I find scattered indications of contempt among his biogra- 
phers, because he could not resign one indulgence — that of scholar- 
ship; and the usual sneers at monkish ignorance and indolence are 
in his case transferred to the weakness of a pilgrim who carried his 
library in his wallet. It is a singular question (putting, as it is the 
modern fashion to do, the idea of Providence wholly aside,) 
whether, but for the literary enthusiasm, which was partly a weak- 
ness, of this old man's character, the Bible would ever have become 
the library of Europe. For that, observe, is the real meaning, in its 
first power, of the word Bible. Not book, merely; ibut "Bibliotheea," 
Treasury of Books. 

I could joyfully believe that the words of Christ, "If they hear 
not Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be persuaded though 
one rose from the dead," had haunted the spirit of the recluse, until 
he resolved that the voices of immortal appeal should be made 
audible to the Churches of all the earth. But so far as we have evi- 
dence, there was no such will or hope to exalt the quiet instincts of 



RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN ART 195 

his natural industry ; and partly as a scholar's exercise, partly as an 
old man's recreation, the severity of the Latin language was soft- 
ened, like Venetian crystal, by the variable fire of Hebrew thought, 
and the "Book of Books" took the abiding form of which all the 
future art of the Western nations was to be an hourly expanding 
interpretation. 

VALUE OF SCRIPTURE IN" THE COMMON LANGUAGE. 

39. And in this matter you have to note that the gist of it lies, 
not in the translation of the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures into an 
easier and a common language, but in their presentation to the 
Church as of common authority. The earlier Gentile Christians 
had naturally a tendency to carry out in various oral exaggeration 
of corruption, the teaching of the Apostle of the Gentiles, until their 
freedom from the bondage of the Jewish law passed into doubt of its 
inspiration; and, after the fall of Jerusalem, even into horror- 
stricken interdiction of its observance. So that, only a few years 
after the remnant of exiled Jews in Pella had elected the Gentile Mar- 
cus for their Bishop, and obtained leave to return to the ^lia Capi- 
tolina built by Hadrian on Mount Zion, "it became a matter of 
doubt and controversy whether a man who sincerely acknowledged 
Jesus as the Messiah, but who still continued to observe the law of 
Moses, could possibly hope for salvation !" 

WHAT WE NEED TO KNOW OP THE BIBLE. 

40. It would be a task of great, and in nowise profitable diffi- 
culty to determine in what measure the consent of the general 
Church, and in what measure the act and authority of Jerome, con- 
tributed to fix in their ever since undisturbed harmony and majesty, 
the canons of Mosaic and Apostolic Scripture. All that the young 
reader need know is, that when Jerome died at Bethlehem, this 
great deed was virtually accomplished : and the series of historic and 
didactic books which form our present Bible, (including the Apocry- 
pha) were established in and above the nascent thought of the 
noblest races of men living on the terrestrial globe, as a direct mes- 
sage to them from its Maker, containing whatever it was necessary 
for them to learn of His purposes towards them, and commanding, 
or advising, with divine authority and infallible wisdom, all that was 
best for them to do, and happiest to desire. 

RESPONSIBILITY AND THE BIBLE. 

41. And it is only for those who have obeyed the law sincerely, 
to say how far the hope held out to them by the lawgiver has been 
fulfilled. The worst "children of disobedience" are those who 
accept, of the Word, what they like, and refuse what they hate : nor 



196 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

is this perversity in them always conscious, for the greater part of 
the sins of the Church have been brought on it by enthusiasm 
which, in passionate contemplation and advocacy of parts of the 
Scripture easily grasped, neglected the study, and at last betrayed 
the balance, of the rest. What forms and methods of self-will are 
concerned in the wresting of the Scriptures to a man's destruction, 
is for the keepers of consciences to examine, not for us. The history 
we have to learn must be wholly cleared of such debate, and the 
influence of the Bible watched exclusively on the persons who re- 
ceive the Word with joy, and obey it in truth. 

THE POWER OF THE CROSS. 

42. There has, however, been always a farther difficulty in 
examining the power of the Bible, than that of distinguishing hon- 
est from dishonest readers. The hold of Christianity on the souls of 
men must be examined, when we come to close dealing with it, under 
these three several heads : there is first, the power of the Cross itself, 
and of the theory of salvation, upon the heart, — then, the operation 
of the Jewish and Greek Scriptures on the intellect, — then, the in- 
fluence on morals of the teaching and example of the living hierar- 
chy. And in the comparison of men as they are and as they might 
have been, there are these three questions to be separately kept in 
mind, — first, what would have been the temper of Europe without 
the charity and labour meant by "bearing the Cross;" then, secondly 
what would the intellect of Europe have become without Biblical 
literature; and lastly, what would the social order of Europe have 
become without its hierarchy. 

43. You see I have connected the words "charity" and "labour" 
under the general term of "bearing the cross." "If any man will 
come after me, let him deny himself, (for charity) and take up his 
cross (of pain) and follow me." 

The idea has been exactly reversed by modern Protestantism, 
which sees, in the cross, not a furca to which it is to be nailed ; but a 
raft on which it, and all its valuable properties, are to be floated into 
Paradise. 

44. Only, therefore, in days when the Cross was received with 
courage, the Scripture searched with honesty, and the Pastor heard 
in faith, can the pure word of God, and the bright sword of the 
Spirit, be recognised in the heart and hand of Christianity. 

INFLUENCE OF THE BIBLE ON MANKIND. 

45. Much more, must the scholar, who would comprehend in 
any degree approaching to completeness, the influence of the Bible 
on mankind, be able to read the interpretations of it which rose 
into the great arts of Europe at their culmination. In every pro- 
vince of Christendom, according to the degree of art-power it pos- 



RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN ART 197 

sesses, a series of illustrations of the Bible were produced as time went 
on ; beginning with vignetted illustrations of manuscript, advancing 
into life-size sculpture, and concluding in perfect power of realistic 
painting. These teachings and preachings of the Church, by means 
of art, are not only a most important part of the general Apostolic 
Acts of Christianity; but their study is a necessary part of Biblical 
scholarship, so that no man can in any large sense understand the 
Bible itself until he has learned also to read these national com- 
mentaries upon it, and been made aware of their collective weight. 
The Protestant reader, who most imagines himself independent in 
his thought, and private in his study, of Scripture, is nevertheless 
usually at the mercy of the nearest preacher who has a pleasant voice 
and ingenious fancy; receiving from him thankfully, and often 
reverently, whatever interpretation of texts the agreeable voice or 
ready wit may recommend: while, in the meantime, he remains en- 
tirely ignorant of, and if left to his own will, invariably destroys as 
injurious, the deeply meditated interpretations of Scripture which, 
in their matter, have been sanctioned by the consent of all the 
Christian Church for a thousand years; and in their treatment, 
have been exalted by the trained skill and inspired imagination of 
the noblest souls ever enclosed in mortal clay. 

ART AS AN AID TO BIBLE INTERPRETATION, 

46. There are few of the fathers of the Christian Church whose 
commentaries on the Bible, or personal theories of its gospel, have 
not been, to the constant exultation of the enemies of the Church, 
fretted and disgraced by angers of controversy, or weakened and 
distracted by irreconcilable heresy. On the contrary, the scriptural 
teaching, through their art, of such men as Orcagna, Giotto, Angel- 
ico, Luca della Robbia, and Luini, is, literally, free from all earthly 
taint of momentary passion; its patience, meekness, and quietness 
are incapable of error through either fear or anger; they are able, 
"without offence, to say all that they wish ; they are bound by tradi- 
tion into a brotherhood which represents unperverted doctrines by 
unchanging scenes; and they are compelled by the nature of their 
work to a deliberation and order of method which result in the pur- 
est state and frankest use of all intellectual power. 

INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 

48. All our conceptions and reasonings on the subject of inspira- 
tion have been disordered by our habit, first of distinguishing 
falsely — or at least needlessly — between inspiration of words and 
of acts; and secondly by our attribution of inspired strength or 
wisdom to some persons or some writers only, instead of to the 
whole body of believers, in so far as they are partakers of the Grace 
of Christ, the Love of God, and the Fellowship of the Holy Ghost. 



198 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

In the degree in which every Christian receives, or refuses, the 
several gifts expressed by that general benediction, he enters or 
is cast out from the inheritance of the saints, — the exact degree 
in which he denies the Christ, angers the Father, and grieves the 
Holy Spirit, he becomes uninspired or unholy, — and in the measure 
in which he trusts Christ, obeys the Father, and consents with the 
Spirit, he becomes inspired in feeling, act, word, and reception of 
word, according to the capacities of his nature. He is not gifted 
with higher ability, nor called into new offices, but enabled to use 
his granted natural powers, in their appointed place, to the best 
purpose. A child is inspired as a child, and a maiden as a maiden ; 
the weak, even in their weakness, and the wise, only in their hour. 

That is the simply determinable theory of the inspiration of all 
true members of the Church ; its truth can only be known by prov- 
ing in trial: but I believe there is no record of any man's having 
tried and declared it vain. 

49, Beyond this theory of general inspiration, there is that of 
especial call and command, with actual dictation of the deeds to 
be done or words to be said. I will enter at present into no exam- 
ination of the evidences of such separating influence; it is not 
claimed by the Fathers of the Church, either for themselves, or 
even for the entire body of the Sacred writers, but only ascribed 
to certain passages dictated at certain times for special needs: and 
there is no possibility of attaching the idea of infallible truth to 
any form of human language in which even these exceptional pas- 
sages have been delivered to us. But this is demonstrably true of 
the entire volume of them, as we have it, and read, — each of us 
as it may be rendered in his native tongue; that, however mingled 
with mystery which we are not required to unravel, or difficulties 
which we should be insolent in desiring to solve, it contains plain 
teaching for men of every rank of soul and state in life, which so 
far as they honestly and implicitly obey, they will be happy and 
innocent to the utmost powers of their nature, and capable of 
victory over all adversities, whether of temptation or pain. 

THE PSALTER AS A BOOK OF WORSHIP. 

50. Indeed, the Psalter alone, which practically was the service 
book of the Church for many ages, contains merely in the first 
half of it the sum of personal and social wisdom. The 1st, 8th, 
12th, 14th, 15th, 19th, 23rd, and 24th psalms, well learned and 
believed, are enough for all personal guidance ; the 48th, 72nd, and 
75th, have in them the law and the prophecy of all righteous gov- 
ernment; and every real triumph of natural science is anticipated 
in the 104th. 



RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN ART 199 

THE BIBLE AS HISTORY AND LITERATURE. 

51. For the contents of the entire volume, consider what other 
group of historic and didactic literature has a range comparable 
with it. There are — 

I. The stories of the Fall and of the Flood, the grandest human 
traditions founded on a true horror of sin. 

II. The story of the Patriarchs, of which the effective truth is 
visible to this day in the polity of the Jewish and Arab races. 

III. The story of Moses, with the results of that tradition in the 
moral law of all the civilized world. 

IV. The story of the Kings — virtually that of all Kinghood, 
in David, and of all Philosophy, in Solomon: culminating in the 
Psalms and Proverbs, with the still more close and practical wis- 
dom of Ecclesiasticus and the Son of Sirach. 

V. The story of the Prophets — virtually that of the deepest mys- 
tery, tragedy, and permanent fate, of national existence. 

VI. The story of Christ. 

VII. The moral law of St. John, and his closing Apocalypse of 
its fulfilment. 

Think, if you can match that table of contents in any other — 
I do not say "book" but "literature." Think, so far as it is pos- 
sible for any of us — either adversary or defender of the faith — to 
extricate his intelligence from the habit and the association of 
moral sentiment based upon the Bible, what literature could have 
taken its place, or fulfilled its function, though every library in 
the world had remained unravaged, and every teacher's truest 
words had been written down? 

52. I am no despiser of profane literature. So far from it, that 
I believe no interpretations of Greek religion have ever been so 
affectionate, none of Roman religion so reverent, as those which 
will be found at the base of my art teaching, and current through 
the entire body of my works. But it was from the Bible that I 
learned the symbols of Homer, and the faith of Horace: the duty 
enforced upon me in early youth of reading every word of the 
gospels and prophecies as if written by the hand of God, gave me 
the habit of awed attention which afterwards made many passages 
of the profane writers, frivolous to an irreligious reader, deeply 
grave to me. How far my mind has been paralysed by the faults 
and sorrow of life, — how far short its knowledge may be of what 
I might have known, had I more faithfully walked in the light 
I had, is beyond my conjecture or confession : but as I never wrote 
for my own pleasure or self-proclaiming, I have been guarded, as 
men who so write always will be, from errors dangerous to others; 
and the fragmentary expressions of feeling or statements of doc- 
trine, which from time to t^'ine I have been able to give, will be 
found now by an attentive reader to bind themselves together into 



200 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

a general system of interpretation of Sacred literature, — both classic 
and Christian, which will enable him without injustice to sympa- 
thize in the faiths of candid and generous souls, of every age and 
every clime. 

53. That there is a Sacred classic literature, running parallel 
with that of the Hebrews, and coalescing in the symbolic legends of 
mediaeval Christendom, is shown in the most tender and impres- 
sive way by the independent, yet similar influence of Virgil upon 
Dante, and upon Bishop Gawaine Douglas. At earlier dates, the 
teaching of every master trained in the Eastern schools was nec- 
essarily grafted on the wisdom of the Greek mythology; and thus 
the story of the Nemean Lion, with the aid of Athena in its con- 
quest, is the real root-stock of the legend of St. Jerome's com- 
panion, conquered by the healing gentleness of the Spirit of Life. 

54. I call it a legend only. Whether Heracles ever slew, or 
St. Jerome ever cherished, the wild or wounded creature, is of no 
moment to us in learning what the Greeks meant by their vase- 
outlines of the great contest, or the Christian painters by their fond 
insistence on the constancy of the Lion-friend. Former tradition, 
in the Story of Samson, — of the disobedient prophet, — of David's 
first inspired victory, and finally of the miracle wrought in the 
defence of the most favoured and most faithful of the greater 
'Prophets, runs always parallel in symbolism with the Dorian fable: 
but the legend of St. Jerome takes up the prophecy of the Millen- 
nium, and foretells, with the Cumsean Sibyl, and with Isaiah, a 
day when the Fear of Man shall be laid in benediction, not en- 
mity, on inferior beings, — when they shall not hurt nor destroy 
in all the holy Mountain, and the Peace of the Earth shall be as 
far removed from its present sorrow, as the present gloriously ani- 
mate universe from the nascent desert, whose deeps were the places 
of dragons, and its mountains, domes of fire. 

Of that day knoweth no man ; but the Kingdom of God is already 
come to those who have tamed in their own hearts what was ram- 
pant of the lower nature, and have learned to cherish what is lovely 
and human in the wandering children of the clouds and fields. — 
Chapter 3. 

CHRISTIANITY WRITTEN IN DEEDS. 

57. With the subsequent quarrels between the two great sects of 
the corrupted church, about prayers for the Dead, Indulgences to 
the living, Papal supremacies, or Popular liberties, no man, woman, 
or child need trouble themselves in studying the history of Chris- 
tianity; they are nothing but the squabbles of men, and laughter 
of fiends among its ruins. The Life, and Gospel, and Power of it, 
are all written in the mighty works of its true believers; in Nor- 
mandy and Sicily, on river islets of Fiance and in the river glens 
of England, on the rocks of Orvieto, and by the sands of Arno. 



RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN ART 201 

But of all, the simplest, completest, and most authoritative in its 
lessons to the active mind of North Europe, is this on the founda- 
tion stones of Amiens. 

58. Believe it or not, reader, as you will: understand only how 
thoroughly it was once believed; and that all beautiful things were 
made, and all brave deeds done in the strength of it — until what 
we may call "this present time," in which it is gravely asked 
whether Religion has any effect on morals, by persons who have 
essentially no idea whatever of the meaning of either Religion or 
Morality. — Ch. 4, 

FAITH THE SUBSTANCE OP TRUE LIFE. 

60. But if, loving well the creatures that are like yourself, you 
feel that you would love still more dearly, creatures better than 
yourself — were they revealed to you; — if striving with all your 
might to mend what is evil, near you and around, you would fain 
look for a day when some Judge of all the Earth shall wholly do 
right, and the little hills rejoice on every side; if, parting with 
the companions that have given you all the best joy you had on 
Earth, you desire ever to meet their eyes again and clasp their 
hands, — where eyes shall no more be dim, nor hands fail ; — if, pre- 
paring yourselves to lie down beneath the grass in silence and lone- 
liness, seeing no more beauty, and feeling no more gladness — you 
would care for the promise to you of a time when you should see 
God's light again, and know the things you have longed to know, 
and walk in the peace of everlasting Love — then, the Hope of these 
things to you is religion, the Substance of them in your life is 
Faith. And in the power of them, it is promised us, that the 
kingdoms of this world shall yet become the kingdoms of our Lord 
and of His Christ.^C/i. 4» 



BOOK THIRD 



Religious Light in Architecture 
and Sculpture 



RELIGIOUS LIGHT IN ARCHI- 
TECTURE AND SCULPTURE 



THE POETRY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
One Vol. 

Part I. The Cottage — 6 Chaps. 
Part II. The Villa— 7 Chaps. 

This is one of the earlier works of Ruskin. The volume con- 
sists, chiefly of a series of articles, written in 1839, for Loudon's 
Architectural Magazine, while the author was yet a student at Ox- 
ford. They did not bear the name of the author but were pub- 
lished under his nom de plume of Kata Phusin. Mr. Loudon wrote 
to young Ruskin's father in the following terms of appreciation : — 

"Your son is certainly the greatest natural genius that ever it has 
been my fortune to become acquainted with, and I cannot but feel 
proud to think that at some future period, when both you and I are 
under the turf, it will be stated in the literary history of your son's 
life that the first article of his was published in Loudon's Magazine 
of Natural History." 

At a later date the articles were reprinted in book form and il- 
lustrated. They treat of the Architecture of European Countries in 
relation to Natural Scenery and National Character and are re- 
garded as a valuable contribution to the subject. 

In his introduction to the subject Ruskin says: — 

"The science of architecture, followed out to its full extent, is one 
of the noblest of those which have reference only to the creations of 
human minds. It is not merely a science of the rule and compass, 
it does not consist only in the observation of just rule, or of fair 
proportion: it is, or ought to be, a science of feeling more than of 
rule, a ministry to the mind, more than to the eye. If we consider 

205 



2o6 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

how much less the beauty and majesty of a building depend upon 
its pleasing certain prejudices of the eye, than upon its rousing cer- 
tain trains of meditation in the mind, it will show in a moment 
how many intricate questions of feeling are involved in the raising 
of an edifice ; it will convince us of the truth of a proposition, which 
might at first have appeared startling, that no man can be an archi- 
tect, who is not a metaphysician." 

In the following selections we see that from the commencement 
of his work as a writer and a critic, (he was now in his twentieth 
year) Ruskin was imbued with a deeply religious spirit, from which 
he never departed. 

THE RELIGIOUS VALUE OF HILLY COUNTRY. 

"It should be remembered, by every proprietor of land in hill 
country, that his possessions are the means of a peculiar education, 
otherwise unattainable, ^o the ^artists, and, in some degree, to the 
literary men, of his country ; that, even in this limited point of 
view, they are a national possession, but much more so when it is 
remembered how many thousands are perpetually receiving from 
them, not merely a transitory pleasure, but such thrilling perpetu- 
ity of pure emotion, such lofty subject for scientific speculation, and 
such deep lessons of natural religion, as only the work of a Deity 
can impress, and only the spirit of an immortal can feel: they 
should remember that the slightest deformity, the most contemp- 
tible excrescence, can injure the effect of the noblest natural scen- 
ery, as a note of discord can annihilate the expression of the purest 
harmony; that thus it is in the power of worms to conceal, to de- 
stroy, or to violate, what angels could not restore, create, or conse- 
crate; and that the right, which every man unquestionably pos- 
sesses, to be an ass, is extended only, in public, to those who are 
innocent in idiotism, not to the more malicious clowns who thrust 
their degraded motley conspicuously forth amidst the fair colours 
of earth, and mix their incoherent cries with the melodies of eter- 
nity, break with their inane laugh upon the silence which Creation 
keeps where Omnipotence passes most visibly, and scrabble over 
with the characters of idiocy the pages that have been written by the 
finger of God." — The English Villa. 

nature's best ROOMS TO THINK IN, 

"Nature has set aside her sublime bits for us to feel and think 
in ; she has pointed out her productive bits for us to sleep and eat 
in ; and, if^ we sleep and eat amongst the sublimity, we are brutal ; 
if we poetise amongst the cultivation, we are absurd. There are 
the time and place for each state of existence, and we should not 
jumble that which nature has separated. She has addressed her- 
self, in one part, wholly to the mind, there is nothing for us to eat 



RELIGIOUS LIGHT IN ARCHITECTURE 207 

but bilberries, nothing to rest upon but rock, and we have no busi- 
ness to concoct pic-nics, and bring cheese, and ale, and sandwiches, 
in baskets, to gratify our beastly natures, where nature never in- 
tended us to eat (if she had, we needn't have brought the baskets). 
In the other part, she has provided for our necessities; and we are 
very absurd, if we make ourselves fantastic, instead of comfortable. 
Therefore, all that we ought to do in the hill villa is, to adapt it 
for the habitation of a man of the highest faculties of perception 
and feeling; but only for the habitation of his hours of common 
sense, not of enthusiasm; it must be his dwelling as a man, not as 
a spirit; as a thing liable to decay, not as an eternal energy; as a 
perishable, not as an immortal." — The Hill Villa. 



II 

THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE. 
One Vol. Seven Chaps. (1849.) 

Chap. 1. The Lamp of Sacrifice. 

Chap. 2. The Lamp of Truth. 

Chap. 3. The Lamp of Power. 

Chap. 4. The Lamp of Beauty. 

Chap. 5. The Lamp of Life. 

Chap. 6. The Lamp of Memory, 

Chap. 7. The Lamp of Obedience. 

Ruskin was only thirty years old when he gave to the world this 
marvelous book. Mr. Harrison has well said of this book that it 
**did for the art of building what Modern Painters had done for the 
art of painting, it shook conventional ideas to the root, and flung 
forth a body of new and pregnant ideas."^ But the book did much 
more than this: not only did it give new ideas, but it applied the 
higher laws of moral truth to facts which had been regarded as 
purely mechanical or intellectual. As in all his works, Ruskin car- 
ried his thought upward. If he builded on the rock he saw no 
beauty, or even utility, in the structure, except as it pointed har- 
moniously towards the heavens. The seven lamps are indeed great 
lights: — they are search-lights, — throwing out their radiant rays 
into the darkness and revealing things that were hid. They are 
constellations, — "seven bright stars" as Charlotte Bronte called them. 

On the appearance of this book the New York Tribune, dated July 
13, 1849, devoted a leading article to it, in which the following 
tribute is paid to Ruskin : — "He is so clearly master of his subject, 
which seems indeed to form a portion of his life and being, he 
writes so sincerely from the inspiration of a large interior experi- 
ence, that we cannot but think it wiser, as well as more modest, to 
place ourselves to him in the relation of learners, rather than crit- 
ics."2 

1 John Ruskin, p. 57. 

2 By the courtesy of the present Editor of the Tribiine this paragraph was cop- 
ied from their file and sent to us. 

208 



RELIGIOUS LIGHT IN ARCHITECTURE 209 

There is, perhaps, more of studied eloquence in this, than m any 
other of Ruskin's works; yet the language is never that of display 
hut is a fitting poetic expression of his lofty grandeur of thought. 

One does not wonder that this comparatively small work of 200 
pages should furnish subject for one of the "Great Books as Life 
Teachers"^ and that this should be chosen as an "interpretation of 
the seven laws of life." For, in truth, this volume is, of all modern 
books, the most striking and original as 'an expression of the essen- 
tials of character building. These seven lamps of which the author 
says : "It required all the ingenuity I was master of to prevent them 
becoming eigM, or even nine,"^ are called the "Lamps of Archi- 
tecture" and this they are, — ^and their light is not given only to 
the architecture of stone and wood, but also to that higher struc- 
tural power of man, which makes for noble soul and enternal life. 

In his introductory preface Mr. Ruskin says: "There is no ac- 
tion so slight, nor so mean, but it may be done to a great purpose, 
and ennobled therefore; nor is any purpose so great but that slight 
actions may help it, and may be so done as to help it much, most 
especially that chief of all purposes, the pleasing of God. Hence 
George Herbert — 

'A servant with this clause 

Makes drudgery divine ; 
Who sweeps a room, as for thy laws, 

Makes that and the action fine.' 

Therefore, in the pressing or recommending of any act or manner 
of acting, we have choice of two separate lines of argument: one 
based on representation of the expediency or inherent value of the 
work, which is often small, and always disputable; the other based 
on proofs of its relations to the higher orders of human virtue, and 
of its acceptableness, so far as it goes, to Him who is the origin 
of virtue." 

Mr. Harrison says: "It was the studies and meditations which 
are embodied in the Seven Lamps that first turned John Ruskin 
from drawings to man, from wall pictures to history and to social 
institutions — which converted him at last from an esthetic connois- 
seur into a moralist who went forth into a scornful world to teach 
a new Gospel of work and a regeneration of the social organism."^ 

1 Newell Dwight Hillis. 

2 Life of Ruskin, p. 62. 
*Fors Clavigera, Vol. I. 



2IO THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

In quoting from this work we perceive that the author's own di- 
visions into chapters will throw light upon the selection and we 
have therefore arranged them accordingly. 



CHAPTER I. THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE. 

DEFINITION OF SACRIFICE. 

I may, perhaps, ask the reader's patience while I set down those 
simple reasons which cause me to believe it a good and just feeling, 
and as well-pleasing to God and honorable in men, as it is beyond 
all dispute necessary to the production of any great work in the 
kind with which we are at present concerned. 

III. Now, first, to define this Lamp, or Spirit of Sacrifice, clearly 
I have said that it prompts us to the offering of precious things 
merely because they are precious, not because they are useful or 
necessary. It is a spirit, for instance, which of two marbles, equally 
beautiful, applicable and durable, would choose the more costly be- 
cause it was so, and of two kinds of decoration, equally effective, 
would choose the more elaborate because it was so, in order that it 
might in the same compass present more cost and more thought. 
It is therefore most unreasoning and enthusiastic, and perhaps best 
negatively defined, as the opposite of the prevalent feeling of mod- 
ern times, which desires to produce the largest results at the least 
cost, 

god's INTEREST IN MAN's WORK. 

Can the Deity be indeed honored by the presentation to Him 
of any material objects of value, or by any direction of zeal or 
wisdom which is not immediately beneficial to men? 

For, observe, it is not now the question whether the fairness and 
majesty of a building may or may not answer any moral purpose; 
it is not the result of labor in any sort of which we are speaking, 
but the bare and mere costliness — the substance and labor and 
time themselves: are these, we ask, independently of their result, 
acceptable offerings to God, and considered by Him as doing Him 
honor? So long 'as we refer this question to the decision of feeling, 
or of conscience, or of reason merely, it will be contradictorily or im- 
perfectly answered; it admits of entire answer only when we have 
met another and a far different question, whether the Bible be in- 
deed one book or two, and whether the character of God revealed 
in the Old Testament be other than His character revealed in the 
New. 

GOD ALWAYS THE SAME. 

IV. Now, it is a most secure truth, that, although the particular 
ordinances divinely appointed for special purposes at any given 



RELIGIOUS LIGHT IN ARCHITECTURE 



2ir 



period of man's history, may be by the same divine authority abro- 
gated at another, it is impossible that any character of God, ap- 
pealed to or described in any ordinance past or present, can ever 
be changed, or understood as changed, by the abrogation of that 
ordinance. God is one and the same, and is pleased or displeased 
by the same things for ever, although one part of His pleasure may 
be expressed at one time rather than another, and although the mode 
in which His pleasure is to be consulted may be by Him graciously 
modified to the circumstances of men. Thus, for instance, it was 
necessary that, in order to the understanding by man of the scheme 
of Redemption, that scheme should be foreshown from the begin- 
ning by the type of bloody sacrifice. But God had no more pleasure 
in such sacrifice in the time of Moses than He has now; He never 
accepted as a propitiation for sin any sacrifice but the single one in 
prospective; and that we may not entertain any shadow of doubt 
on this subject, the worthlessness of all other sacrifice than this is 
proclaimed at the very time when typical sacrifice was most impera- 
tively demanded. God was a spirit, and could be worshipped only 
in spirit and in truth, as singly and exclusively when every day 
brought its claim of typical and material service or offering, as now 
when He asks for none but that of the heart. 

SACRIFICIAL TYPES MUST COST SOMETHING. 

V. Was it necessary to the completeness, as a type, of the Leviti- 
oal sacrifice, or to its utility as an explanation of divine purposes, 
that it should cost anything to the person in whose behalf it was 
offered? On the contrary, the sacrifice which it foreshadowed was 
to be God's free gift; and the cost of, or difficulty of obtaining, the 
sacrificial type, could only render that type in a measure obscure, 
and less expressive of the offering which God would in the end 
provide for all men. Yet this costliness was generally a condition 
of the acceptableness of the sacrifice. ''Neither will I offer unto the 
Lord my God of that which doth cost me nothing."^ That costliness, 
therefore, must be an acceptable condition in all human offerings 
at all times ; for if it was pleasing to God once, it must please Him al- 
ways, unless directly forbidden by Him afterwards, which it has 
never been. 

Again, was it necessary to the typical perfection of the Levitical 
offering, that it should be the best of the flock? Doubtless the spot- 
lessness of the sacrifice renders it more expressive to the Christian 
mind; but was it because so expressive that it was actually, and in 
so many words, demanded by God? Not at all. It was demanded 
by Him expressly on the same grounds on which an earthly gov- 
ernor would demand it, as a testimony of respect. "Offer it now 

*2 Sam. xxiy. 24. Deut xvi. 16, 17. 



212 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

unto thy governor."^ And the less valuable offering was rejected, not 
because it did not image Christ, nor fulfill the purposes of sacrifice, 
but because it indicated a feeling that would grudge the best of 
its possessions to Him who gave them; and because it was a bold 
dishonoring of God in the sight of man. Whence it may be infalli- 
bly concluded, that in whatever offerings we may now see reason to 
present unto God a condition of their acceptableness will be now, as 
it was then, that they should be the best of their kind. 

IS SPLENDOR IN TEMPLE SERVICES NECESSARY? 

VI. But farther, was it necessary to the carrying out of the 
Mosaical system, that there should be either art or splendor in the 
form or services of the tabernacle or temple? Was it necessary 
to the perfection of any one of their typical offices, that there should 
be that hanging of blue, and purple, and scarlet? those taches of 
brass and sockets of silver? that working in cedar and overlaying 
with gold ? One thing at least is evident : there was a deep and awful 
■danger in it; a danger that the God whom they so worshipped, 
might be associated in the minds of the serfs of Egypt with the 
gods to whom they had seen similar gifts offered and similar hon- 
ors paid This danger was the one against which 

God made provision, not only by commandments, by threatenings, 
by promises, the most urgent, repeated, and impressive; but by 
temporary ordinances of a severity so terrible as almost to dim for 
a time, in the eyes of His people. His attribute of mercy. The prin- 
cipal object of every instituted law of that Theocracy, of every 
judgment sent forth in its vindication, was to mark to the people 
His hatred of idolatry; a hatred written under their advancing 
steps, in the blood of the Canaanite, and more sternly still in the 
darkness of their own desolation, when the children and the suck- 
lings swooned in the streets of Jerusalem, and the lion tracked his 
prey in the dust of Samaria. Yet against this mortal danger pro- 
vision was not made in one way (to man's thoughts the simplest, 
the most natural, the most effective), by withdrawing from the wor- 
ship of the Divine Being whatever could delight the sense, or shape 
the imagination, or limit the idea of Deity to place. This one way 
God refused, demanding for Himself such honors, and accepting 
for Himself such local dwelling, as had been paid and dedicated to 
idol gods by heathen worshippers; and for what reason? Was the 
glory of the tabernacle necessary to set forth or image His divine 
glory to the minds of His people? What! purple or scarlet neces- 
sary to the people who had seen the great river of Egypt run scar- 
let to the sea, under His condemnation? What! golden lamp and 
cherub necessary for those who had seen the fires of heaven falling 

iMal. i. S, 



RELIGIOUS LIGHT IN ARCHITECTURE 213 

like a mantle on Mount Sinai, and its golden courts opened to re- 
ceive their mortal lawgiver? What! silver clasp and fillet neces- 
sary when they had seen the silver waves of the Red Sea clasp in 
their arched hollows the corpses of the horse and his rider? Nay — ■ 
^ not so. There was but one reason, and that an eternal one ; that 
as the covenant that He made with men was accompanied with 
some external sign of its continuance, and of His remembrance of 
it, so the acceptance of that covenant might be marked and signi- 
fied by use, in some external sign of their love and obedience, and 
surrender of themselves and theirs to His will; and that their grat- 
itude to Him, and continual remembrance of Him, might have at 
once their expression ^and their enduring testimony in the presenta- 
tion to Him, not only of the firstlings of the herd and fold, not only 
of the fruits of the earth and the tithe of time, but of all treasures 
of wisdom and beauty; of the thought that invents, and the hand 
that labors ; of wealth of wood, and weight of stone ; of the strength 
of iron, and of the light of gold. 

TITHES BELONG TO GOD ALWAYS. 

If there be any difference between the Levitical and the Christian 
offering, it is that the latter may be just so much the wider in its 
range as it is less typical in its meaning, as it is thankful instead 
of sacrificial. There can be no excuse accepted because the Deity 
does not now visibly dwell in His temple; if He is invisible it is 
only through our failing faith: nor any excuse because other calls 
are more immediate or more sacred; this ought to be done, and 
not the other left undone. Yet this objection, as frequent as feeble, 
must be more specifically answered. 

THE BEST GIFTS. — GOD's HOUSE AND OURS. 

VII. A better and more honorable offering is made to our Master 
in ministry to the poor, in extending the knowledge of His name, 
in the practice of the virtues by which that name is hallowed, than 
in material presents to His temple. Assuredly it is so : woe to all 
who think that any other kind or manner of offering may in any 
wise take the place of these! Do the people need place to pray, and 
calls to hear His word? Then it is no time for smoothing pillars 
or carving pulpits ; let us have enough first of walls and roofs. Do 
the people need teaching from house to house, and bread from day 
to day? Then they are deacons and ministers we want, not archi- 
tects. I insist on this, I plead for this; but let us examine our- 
selves, and see if this be indeed the reason for our backwardness 
in the lesser work. The question is not between God's house and 
His poor: it is not between God's house and His Gospel. It is be- 
tween God's house and ours. Have we no tesselated colors on 



214 TEE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

our floors? no frescoed fancies on our roofs? no niched statuary in 
our corridors? no gilded furniture in our chambers? no costly 
stones in our cabinets? Has even the tithe of these been offered? 
They are, or they ought to be, the signs that enough has been de- 
voted to the great purposes of human stewardship, and that there 
remains to us what we can spend in luxury; but there is a greater 
and prouder luxury than this selfish one — that of bringing a por- 
tion of such things as these into sacred service, and presenting 
them for a memorial that our pleasure as well as our toil has been 
hallowed by the remembrance of Him who gave both the strength 
and the reward. And until this has been done, I do not see how 
such possessions can be retained in happiness. 



ENRICH THE TEMPLES. 

I do not understand the feeling which would arch our own 
gates and pave our own thresholds, and leave the church 
with its narrow door and foot-worn sill; the feeling which 
enriches our own chambers with all manner of costliness, and 
endures the bare wall and mean compass of the temple. 
There ^ is seldom even so severe a choice to be made, seldom so 
much self-denial to be exercised. There are isolated cases, in 
which men's happiness and mental activity depend upon a certain 
degree of luxury in their houses ; but then this is true luxury, felt 
and tasted, and profited by. In the plurality of instances nothing 
of the kind is attempted, nor can be enjoyed; men's average re- 
sources cannot reach it ; and that which they can reach, gives them 
no pleasure, and might be spared. It will be seen, in the course 
of the following chapters, that I am no advocate for meanness of 
private habitation. I would fain introduce into it all magnificence, 
care, and beauty, where they are possible ; but I would not have that 
useless expense in unnoticed fineries or formalities; cornicings of 
ceilings and graining of doors, and fringing of curtains, and thou- 
sands such; things which have become foolishly and apathetically 
habitual — things on whose common appliance hang whole trades, 
to which there never yet belonged the blessing of giving one jay 
of real pleasure, or becoming of the remotest or most contemptible 
use — things which cause half the expense of life, and destroy more 
than half its comfort, manliness, respectability, freshness, and facil- 
ity. I speak from experience: I know what it is to live in a cot- 
tage with a deal floor and roof, and a hearth of mica slate; and 
I know it to be in many respects healthier and happier than living 
between a Turkey carpet and gilded ceiling, beside a steel grate and 
polished fender. I do not say that such things have not their place 
and propriety; but I say this, emphatically, that the tenth part of 

*Num. xxxi. 54. Psa. Ixxvi. 11. 



RELIGIOUS LIGHT IN ARCHITECTURE 215 

the expense which is sacrificed in domestic vanities, if not abso- 
lutely and meaninglessly lost in domestic discomforts, and incum- 
brances, would, if collectively offered and wisely employed, build a 
marble church for every town in England ; such a church as it should 
be a joy and a blessing even to pass near in our daily ways and walks, 
and as it would bring the light into the eyes to see from afar, lift- 
ing its fair height above the purple crowd of humble roofs. 



CHURCHES OF MARBLE. 

VIII. I have said for every town : I do not want a marble church 
for every village; nay, I do not want marble churches at all for 
their own sake, but for the sake of the spirit that would build them. 
The church has no need of any visible splendors ; her power is inde- 
pendent of them, her purity is in some degree opposed to them. 
The simplicity of a pastoral sanctuary is lovelier than the majesty 
of an urban temple ; and it may be more than questioned whether, 
to the people, such majesty has ever been the source of any increase 
of effective piety ; but to the builders it has been, and must ever be. 
It is not the church we want, but the sacrifice; not the emotion of 
admiration, but the act of adoration : not the gift, but the giving. 
And see how much more charity the full understanding of this 
might admit, among classes of men of naturally opposite feelings; 
and how much more nobleness in the work. 



GOD HONORS THE WORK OF LOVE. 

IX. While I would especially deprecate the imputation of any 
other acceptableness or usefulness to the gift itself than that which it 
receives from the spirit of its presentation, it may be well to ob- 
serve, that there is a lower advantage which never fails to accom- 
pany a dutiful observance of any right abstract principle. While 
the first fruits of his possessions were required from the Israelite as 
a testimony of fidelity, the payment of those first fruits was never- 
theless rewarded, and that connectedly and specifically, by the in- 
crease of those possessions. Wealth, and length of days, and peace, 
were the promised and experienced rewards of his offering, though 
they were not to be the objects of it. The tithe paid into the store- 
house was the expressed condition of the blessing which there should 
not be room enough to receive. And it will be thus always: God 
never forgets any work or labor of love; and whatever it may be of 
which the first and best proportions or powers have been presented 
to Him, he will multiply and increase sevenfold tithes. Therefore, 
though it may not be necessarily the interest of religion to admit 
the service of the arts, the arts will never flourish until they have 
been primarily devoted to that service — devoted, both by architect 
and employer ; by the one in scrupulous, earnest, affectionate design ; 



2i6 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

by the other in expenditure at least more frank, at least less calcu- 
lating, than that which he would admit in the indulgence of hia 
own private feelings. 

LUXURIANCE OF ORNAMENT. 

Ornament cannot be overcharged if it be good, and it is always 

overcharged when it is bad It is not less the boast 

of some styles that they can bear ornament, than of others that 
they can do without it; but we do not often enough reflect that 
those very styles, of so haughty simplicity, owe part of their pleas- 
urableness to contrast, and would be wearisome if universal. They 
are but the rests and monotones of the art; it is to its far happier, 
far higher, exaltation that we owe those fair fronts of variegated 
mosaic, charged with wild fancies and dark hosts of imagery, 
thicker and quainter than ever filled the depth of midsummer 
dream ; those vaulted gates, trellised with close leaves ; those window- 
labyrinths of twisted tracery and starry light; those misty masses 
of multitudinous pinnacle and diademed tower; the only witnesses, 
perhaps that remain to us of the faith and fear of nations. All 
else for which the builders sacrificed, has passed away — all their 
living interests, and aims, and achievements. We know not for 
what they labored, and we see no evidence of their reward. Victory, 
wealth, authority, happiness — all have departed, though bought by 
many a bitter sacrifice. But of them, and their life, and their toil 
upon the earth, one reward, one evidence, is left to us in those gray 
heaps of deep-wrought stone. They have taken with them to the 
grave their powers, their honors, and their errors; but they have 
left us their adoration. 



CHAP. II. THE LAMP OF TRUTH. 

THE FLATTERING LIE WORSE THAN THE MALICIOUS. 

I. There are some faults slight in the sight of love, some errors 
slight in the estimate of wisdom; but truth forgives no insult, and 
endures no stain. We do not enough consider this; nor enough 
dread the slight and continual occasions of offence against her. We 
are too much in the habit of looking at falsehood in its darkest 
associations, and through the color of its worst purposes. That in- 
dignation which we profess to feel at deceit absolute, is indeed only 
at deceit malicious. We resent calumny, hypocrisy and treachery, 
because they harm us, not because they are untrue. Take the de- 
traction and the mischief from the untruth, and we are little of- 
fended by it; turn it into praise, and we may be pleased with it. 
And yet it is not calumny nor treachery that does the largest sum 
of mischief in the world; they are continually crushed, and are felt 



RELIGIOUS LIGHT IN ARCHITECTURE 217 

only in being conquered. But it is the glistening and softly spoken 
lie ; the amiable fallacy ; the patriotic lie of the historian, the provi- 
dent lie of the politician, the zealous lie of the partizan, the merci- 
ful lie of the friend, and the careless lie of each man to himself, 
that cast that black mystery over humanity, through which any 
man who pierces, we thank as we would thank one who dug a well 
in a desert; happy in that the thirst for truth still remains with us, 
even when we have wilfully left the fountains of it. 

SIN AS SIN. 

It would be well if moralists less frequently confused the great- 
ness of a sin with its unpardonableness. The two characters are alto- 
gether distinct. The greatness of a fault depends partly on the na- 
ture of the person against whom it is committed, partly upon the 
extent of its consequences. Its pardonableness depends, humanly 
speaking, on the degree of temptation to it. One class of circum- 
stances determines the weight of the attaching punishment; the 
other, the claim to remission of punishment: and since it is not 
easy for men to estimate the relative weight, nor possible for them 
to know the relative consequences, of crime, it is usually wise in 
them to quit the care of such nice measurements, and to look to the 
other and clearer condition of culpability; esteeming those faults 
worst which are committed under least temptation. I do not mean 
to diminish the blame of the injurious and malicious sin, of the 
selfish and deliberate falsity; yet it seems to me, that the shortest 
way to check the darker forms of deceit is to set watch more scrupu- 
lous against those which have mingled, unregarded and unchas- 
tised, with the current of our life. Do not let us lie at all. Do not 
think of one falsity as harmless, and another as slight, and another 
as unintended. Cast them all aside: they may be light and acci- 
dental ; but they are an ugly soot from the smoke of the pit, for all 
that ; and it is better that our hearts should be swept clean of them, 
without over care as to which is largest or blackest. 

DIFFICULTY OF SPEAKING TRUTH. 

Speaking truth is like writing fair, and comes only by practice; 
it is less a matter of will than of habit, and I doubt if any occasion 
can be trivial which permits the practice and formation of^ such 
a habit. To speak and act truth with constancy and precision is 
nearly as difficult, and perhaps as meritorious, as to speak it under 
intimidation or penalty ; and it is a strange thought how many men 
there are, as I trust, who would hold to it at the cost of fortune or 
life, for one who would hold to it at the cost of a little daily trou- 
ble. And seeing that of all sin there is, perhaps, no one more flatly 
opposite to the Almighty, no one more "wanting the good of virtue 



2i8 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

and of being," than this of lying, it is surely a strange insolence 
to fall into the foulness of it on light or on no temptation, and 
surely becoming an honorable man to resolve that, whatever sem- 
blances or fallacies the necessary course of his life may compel him 
to bear or to believe, none shall disturb the serenity of his voluntary 
actions, nor diminish the reality of his chosen delights. 

TRUTH AND WORK. 

II. If this be just and wise for truth's sake, much more is it nec- 
essary for the sake of the delights over which she has influence. 
For, as I advocated the expression of the Spirit of Sacrifice in the 
acts and pleasures of men, not as if thereby those acts could further 
the cause of religion, but because most assuredly they might therein 
be infinitely ennobled themselves, so I would have the Spirit or 
Lamp of Truth clear in the hearts of our artists and handicrafts- 
men, not as if the truthful practice of handicrafts could far ad- 
vance the cause of truth, but because I would fain see the handi- 
crafts themselves urged by the spurs of chivalry : and it is, indeed, 
marvellous to see what power and universality there is in this single 
principle, and how in the consulting or forgetting of it lies half 
the dignity or decline of every art and act of man. 

GOD OBEDIENT TO HIS OWN LAWS. 

XIII. Divine Wisdom is, and can be shown to us only in its meet- 
ing and contending with the difficulties which are voluntarily, and 
for the sake of that contest, admitted by the Divine Omnipotence; 
and these diflficulties, observe, occur in the form of natural laws or 
ordinances, which might, at many times and in countless ways, be 
infringed with apparent advantage, but which are never infringed, 
whatever costly arrangements or adaptations their observance may 
necessitate for the accomplishment of given purposes. The exam- 
ple most apposite to our present subject is the structure of the bones 
of animals. No reason can be given, I believe, why the system of 
the higher animals should not have been made capable, as that of the 
Infusoria is, of secreting flint, instead of phosphate of lime, or more 
naturally still, carbon; so framing the bones of adamant at once. 
The elephant or rhinoceros had the earthy part of their bones been 
made of diamond, might have been as agile and light as grasshop- 
pers, and other animals might have been framed far more mag- 
nificently colossal than any that walk the earth. In other worlds we 
may, perhaps, see such creations; a creation for every element, and 
elements infinite. But the architecture of animals here, is appointed 
by God to be a marble architecture, not a flint nor adamant archi- 
tecture; and all manner of expedients are adopted to attain the 
utmost degree of strength and size possible under that great limi- 



RELIGIOUS LIGHT IN ARCHITECTURE 219 

tation. The jaw of the ichthyosaurus is pieced and riveted, the 
leg of the megatherium is a foot thick, and the head of the myodon 
has a double skull ; we, in our wisdom, should, doubtless, have given 
the lizard a steel jaw, and the myodon a cast-iron headpiece, and 
forgotten the great principle to which all creation bears witness, 
that order and system are nobler things than power. But God 
shows us in Himself, strange as it may seem, not only authoritative 
perfection, but even the perfection of Obedience — an obedience to 
His own laws : and in the cumbrous movement of those unwieldiest 
of His creatures we are reminded, even in His divine essence, of 
that attribute of uprightness in the human creature "that sweareth 
to his own hurt and changeth not." 

THE FALL OF MEDIEVAL ARCHITECTURE. 

XXVin. So fell the great dynasty of medieval architecture. It 
was because it had lost its own strength, and disobeyed its own 
laws — because its order, and consistency, and organization, had 
been broken through — that it could oppose no resistance to the rush 
of overwhelming innovation. And this, observe, all because it had 
sacrificed a single truth. From that one surrender of its integrity, 
from that one endeavor to assume the semblance of what it was 
not, arose the multitudinous forms of disease and decrepitude, which 
rotted away the pillars of its supremacy. It was not because its 
time was come; it was not because it was scorned by the 
classical Romanist, or dreaded by the faithful Protestant, That 
scorn and that fear it might have survived, and lived ; it would have 
stood forth in stern comparison with the enervated sensuality of the 
renaissance; it would have risen in renewed and purified honor, and 
with a new soul, from the ashes into which it sank, giving up its 
glory, as it had received it, for the honor of God — but its own truth 
was gone, and it sank forever. There was no wisdom nor strength 
left in it, to raise it from the dust ; and the error of zeal, and the 
softness of luxury smote it down and dissolved it away. It is good 
for us to remember this, as we tread upon the bare ground of its 
foundations, and stumble over its scattered stones. Those rent 
skeletons of pierced wall, through which our sea-winds moan and 
murmur, strewing them joint by joint, and bone by bone, along the 
bleak promontories on which the Pharos lights came once from 
houses of prayer — those grey arches and quiet isles under which 
the sheep of our valleys feed and rest on the turf that has buried 
their altars — those shapeless heaps, that are not of the Earth, which 
lift our fields into strange and sudden banks of flowers, and stay 
our mountain streams with stones that are not their own, have other 
thoughts to ask from us than those of mourning for the rage that de- 
spoiled, or the fear that forsook them. It was not the robber, not the 
fanatic, not the blasphemer, who sealed the destruction that they 



220 THE RELIGION, OF. RUSKIN 

had wrought; the war, the wrath, the terror, might have worke<i 
their worst, and the strong walls would have risen, and the slight 
pillars would have started again, from under the hand of the de- 
stroyer. But they could not rise out of the ruins of their own vio- 
lated truth. 



CHAP. III. THE LAMP OF POWER. 

THE SECRET OP SUCCESS. 

II. "Whatever is in architecture fair or beautiful, is imitated from 
natural forms; and what is not so derived, but depends for its dig- 
nity upon arrangement and government received from human 
mind, becomes the expression of the power of that mind, and re- 
ceives a sublimity high in proportion to the power expressed. All 
building, therefore, shows man either as gathering or governing: 
and the secrets of his success are his knowing what to gather, and 
how to rule. These are the two great intellectual Lamps of Archi- 
tecture ; the one consisting in a just and humble veneration for the 
works of God upon the earth, and the other in an understanding of 
the dominion over those works which has been vested in man. 

man's work with god exalts him. 

III. I have never seen any aim at the expression of abstract 
power ; never any appearance of a consciousness that, in this primal 
art of man, there is room for the marking of his relations with the 
mightiest, as well as the fairest, works of God ; but that those works 
themselves have been permitted, by their Master and his, to receive 
an added glory from their association with earnest efforts of human 
thought. In the edifices of Man there should be found reverent 
worship, and following, not only of the spirit which rounds the 
pillars of the forest, and arches the vault of the avenue — which 
gives veining to the leaf, and polish to the shell, and grace to every 
pulse that agitates animal organization, — but of that also which 
reproves the pillars of the earth, and builds up her barren precipices 
into the coldness of the clouds, and lifts her shadowy cones of 
mountain purple into the pale arch of the sky. 

nature the great school of power. 

An Architect should live as little in cities as a painter. Send him 
to our hills, and let him study there what nature understands by a 
buttress, and what by a dome. There was something in the old 
power of architecture, which it had from the recluse more than 
from the citizen. The buildings of which I have spoken with chief 
praise, rose, indeed, out of the war of the piazza, and above the 
fury of the populace: and Heaven forbid that for such cause we 



RELIGIOUS LIGHT IN ARCHITECTURE 221 

should ever have to lay a larger stone, or rivet a firmer bar, in 
our England I But we have other sources of power, in the imagery 
of our iron coasts and azure hills ; of power more pure, nor less se- 
rene, than that of the hermit spirit which once lighted with white 
lines of cloisters the glades of the Alpine pine, and raised into or- 
dered spires the wild rocks of the Norman sea; which gave to the 
ftemple gate the depth and darkness of Elijah's Horeb cave; and 
lifted, out of the populous city, grey cliffs of lonely stone, into the 
midst of sailing birds and silent air. 



CHAP. IV. THE LAMP OF BEAUTY. 

TYPES OP BEAUTY IN NATURE. 

n. The Romanesque arch is beautiful as an abstract line. Its 
type is always before us in that of the apparent vault of heaven, 
and horizon of the earth. The cylindrical pillar is always beautiful 
for God has so moulded the stem of every tree that it is pleasant to 
the eyes. The pointed arch is beautiful; it is the termination of 
every leaf that shakes in summer wind, and its most fortunate as- 
sociations are directly borrowed from the trefoiled grass of the field, 
or from the stars of its flowers. Further than this, man's invention 
could not reach without frank imitation. His next step was to 
gather the flowers themselves, and wreathe them in his capitals. 

COMMON FORMS THE MOST NATURAL. 

III. I think I am justified in considering those forms to be most 
natural which are most frequent; or, rather, that on the shapes 
■which in the every-day world are familiar to the eyes of men, God 
has stamped those characters of beauty which He has made it man's 
nature to love; while in certain exceptional forms He has shown 
that the adoption of the others was not a matter of necessity, but 
part of the adjusted harmony of creation. I believe that thus we 
may reason from Frequency to Beauty, and vice versa; that knowing 
a thing to be frequent we may assume it to be beautiful; and as- 
sume that which is most frequent to be most beautiful : I mean, of 
course, visibly frequent; for the forms of things which are hidden 
in caverns of the earth, or in the anatomy of animal frames, are 
evidently not intended by their Maker to bear the habitual gaze of 
man. And, again, by frequency I mean that limited and isolated 
frequency which is characteristic of all perfection; not mere multi- 
tude : as a rose is a common flower, but yet there are not so many 
roses on the trees as there are leaves. In this respect Nature is 
sparing of her highest, and lavish of her less, beauty; but I call 
the flower as frequent as the leaf, because, each in its allotted quan- 
tity, where the one is, there will ordinarily be the other. 



222 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

INSCRIPTIONS AND PICTURES IN CHURCHES. 

IX. Inscriptions in churches, in rooms, and on pictures, are 
often desirable, but they are not to be considered as architectural or 
pictorial ornaments: they are, on the contrary, obstinate offenses 
to the eye, not to be suffered except Vvhen their intellectual office in- 
troduces them. Place them, therefore, where they will be read, and 
there only; and let them be plainly written, and not turned upside 
down, nor wrong end first. It is an ill sacrifice to beauty to make 
that illegible whose only merit is in its sense. Write ii as you would 
speak it, simply; and do not draw the eye to it when it would fam 
rest elsewhere, nor recommend your sentence by anything but a 
little openness of place and architectural silence about it. Write 
the Commandments on the Church walls where they may be plainly 
seen, but do not put a dash and a tail to every letter ; and remember 
that you are an architect, not a writing master. 

GIOTTO AS AN INSTANCE OF NATURE'S LESSONS. 

XLIII. I said that the Power of human mind had its growth 
in the Wilderness; much more must the love and the conception of 
that beauty, whose every line and hue we have seen to be, at the 
best, a faded image of God's daily work, and an arrested ray of 
some star of creation, be given chiefly in the places which He has 
gladdened by planting there the fir tree and the pine. Not within 
the walls of Florence, but among the far away fields of her lilies, 
was the child trained who was to raise that headstone of Beauty 
above the towers of watch and war.^ Remember all that he became ; 
count the sacred thoughts with which he filled the heart of Italy; 
ask those who followed him what they learned at his feet; and 
when you have numbered his labors, and received their testimony, 
if it seem to you that God had verily poured out upon this His 
servant no common nor restrained portion of His Spirit, and that 
he was indeed a king among tlie children of men, remembei also 
that the legend upon his crown was that of David's: — "I took thee 
from the sheepcote, and from following the sheep." 

CHAP. V. THE LAMP OF LIFE. 

man's TWO-FOLD NATURE. 

III. When we begin to be concerned with the energies of man, 
we find ourselves instantly dealing with a double creature. Most 
part of his being seems to have a fictitious counterpart, which it is 
at his peril if he do not cast off and deny. Thus he has a true and 
false (otherwise called a living and dead, or a feigned or unfeigned) 
faith. He has a true and a false hope, a true and a false charity, 

(1). — The reference here is to Giotto. 



RELIGIOUS LIGHT IN ARCHITECTURE 223 

and, finally, a true and a false life. His true life is like that of 
lower organic beings, the independent force by which he moulds 
and governs external things ; it is a force of assimilation which con- 
verts everything around him into food, or into instruments; and 
which, however humbly or obediently it may listen to or follow 
the guidance of superior intelligence, never forfeits its own author- 
ity as a judging principle, as a will capable either of obeying or 
rebelling. His false life is, indeed, but one of the conditions of 
death or stupor, but it acts, even when it cannot be said to animate, 
and is not always easily known from the true. It is that life of 
custom and accident in which many of us pass much of our time 
in the world; that life in which we do what we have not purposed, 
and speak what we do not mean, and assent to what w^e do not un- 
derstand ; that life which is overlaid by the weight of things external 
to it, and is moulded by them, instead of assimilating them; that, 
which instead of growing and blossoming under any wholesome 
dew, is crystallised over with it, as with hoar frost, and becomes to 
the true life what an arborescence is to a tree, a candied agglomera- 
tion of thoughts and habits foreign to it, brittle, obstinate, and icy, 
which can neither bend nor grow, but must be crushed and broken 
to bits, if it stand in our way. All men are liable to be in some 
degree frost-bitten in this sort; all are partly encumbered and 
crusted over with idle matter; only, if they have real life in them, 
they are always breaking this bark aw^ay in noble rents, until it 
becomes, like the black strips upon the birch tree, only a witness 
of their own inward strength. But, with all the efforts that the 
best men make, much of their being passes in a kind of dream, in 
which they indeed move, and play their parts sufficiently, to the 
eyes of their fellow-dreamers, but have no clear consciousness of 
what is around them, or within them; blind to the one, insensible 
to the other, vwdpoi. , 

WORK WITH YOUR HEART IN IT. 

XXIV. We are not sent into this world to do any thing into 
which we cannot put our hearts. We have certain work to do for 
our bread, and that is to be done strenuously ; other work to do for 
our delight, and that is to be done heartily: neither is to be done 
by halves or shifts, but with a will ; and what is not worth this effort 
is not to be done at all. Perhaps all that we have to do is meant for 
nothing more than an exercise of the heart and of the will, and is 
useless in itself; but, at all events, the little use it has may well be 
spared if it is not worth putting our hands and our strength to. It 
does not become our immortality to take an ease inconsistent with 
its authority, nor to suffer any instruments with which it can dis- 
pense, to come between it and the things it rules : and he who would 
form the creations of his own mind by any other instrument than 



224 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

his own hand, would, also, if he might, give grinding organs to 
Heaven's angels, to make their music easier. There is dreaming 
enough, and earthiness enough, and sensuality enough in human 
existence without our turning the few glowing moments of it into 
mechanism ; and since our life must at the best be but a vapor that 
appears for a little time and then vanishes away, let it at least ap- 
pear as a cloud in the height of Heaven, not as the thick darkness 
that broods over the blast of the Furnace, and rolling of the Wheel. 



CHAP. VI. THE LAMP OF MEMORY. 

MEMORY IN ARCHITECTURE. 

II. "We may live without her, and worship without her, but we 
cannot remember without her. How cold is all history how lifeless 
all imagery, compared to that which the living nation writes, and 
the uncorrupted marble bears! how many pages of doubtful record 
might we not often spare, for a few stones left one upon another! 
The ambition of the old Babel builders was well directed for this 
world: there are but two strong conquerors of the forgetfulness of 
men, Poetry and Architecture; and the latter in some sort includes 
the former, and is mightier in its reality; it is well to have, not 
only what men have thought and felt, but what their hands 
have handled, and their strength wrought, and their eyes beheld, 
all the days of their life. The age of Homer is surrounded with 
darkness, his very personality with doubt. Not so that of Pericles: 
and the day is coming when we shall confess, that we have learned 
more of Greece out of the crumbled fragments of her sculpture than 
even from her sweet singers or soldier historians. 

GOOD MEN AND THEIR HOMES. 

III. There is a sanctity in a good man's house which cannot be 
renewed in every tenement that rises on its ruins: and I believe 
that good men would generally feel this; and that having spent 
their lives happily and honorably, they would be grieved at the 
close of them to think that the place of their earthly abode, which 
had seen, and seemed almost to sympathise in all their honor, their 
gladness, or their suffering, — that this, with all the record it bare 
of them, and all of material things that they had loved and ruled 
over, and set the stamp of themselves upon — was to be swept away, 
as soon as there w^as room made for them in the grave; that no re- 
spect was to be shown to it, no affection felt for it, no good to be 
drawn from it by their children; that though there was a monu- 
ment in the church, there was no warm monument in the heart and 
house to them; that all that they ever treasured was despised, and 



RELIGIOUS LIGHT IN ARCHITECTURE 225 

the places that had sheltered and comforted them were dragged 
down to the dust. I say that a good man would fear this ; and that, 
far more, a good son, a noble descendant, would fear doing it to 
his father's house. I say that if men lived like men indeed, their 
houses would be temples — temples which we should hardly dare to 
injure, and in which it would make us holy to be permitted to live ; 
and there must be a strange dissolution of natural affection, a 
strange unthankfulness for all that homes have given and parents 
taught, a strange consciousness that we have been unfaithful to our 
fathers' honor, or that our own lives are not such as would make 
tour dwellings sacred to our children, when each man would fain 
build to himself, and build for the little revolution of his own 
life only. 

GOD IN THE HOME. 

IV. When men do not love their hearths, nor reverence their 
thresholds, it is a sign that they have dishonored both, and that they 
have never acknowledged the true universality of that Christian 
worship which was indeed to supersede the idolatry, but not the 
piety, of the pagan. Our God is a household God, as well as a heav- 
enly one; He has an altar in every man's dwelling; let men look 
to it when they rend it lightly and pour out its ashes. It is not a 
question of mere ocular delight, it is no question of intellectual 
pride, or of cultivated and critical fancy, how, and with what aspect 
of durability and of completeness, the domestic buildings of a 
nation shall be raised. 

BETTER HOUSES FOR MEN AND WOMEN. 

It would be better if, in every possible instance, men built their 
own houses on a scale commensurate rather with their condition at 
the commencement, than their attainments at the termination, of 
their worldly career; and built them to stand as long as human 
work at its strongest can be hoped to stand; recording to their chil- 
dren what they have been, and from what, if so it had been permit- 
ted them, they had risen. And when houses are thus built, we may 
have that true domestic architecture, the beginning of all other, 
which does not disdain to treat with respect and thoughtfulness the 
small habitation as well as the large, and which invests with the 
dignity of contented manhood the narrowness of worldly circum- 
stance. 

DUTY TO COMING GENERATIONS. 

IX. The idea of self-denial for the sake of posterity, of practising 
present economy for the sake of debtors yet unborn, of planting 
forests that our descendants may live under their shade, or of rais- 
ing cities for future nations to inhabit, never, I suppose, efficiently 
takes place among publicly recognised motives of exertion. Yet 



226 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

these are not the less our duties ; nor is our part fitly sustained upon 
the earth, unless the range of our intended and deliberate useful- 
ness include not only the companions, but the successors, of our 
pilgrimage. God has lent us the earth for our life; it is a great 
entail. It belongs as much to those who are to come after us, and 
whose names are already written in the book of creation, as to us; 
and we have no right, by anything that we do or neglect, to involve 
them in unnecessary penalties, or deprive them of benefits which it 
was in our power to bequeath. , . . Men cannot benefit those 
that are with them as they can benefit those who come after them ; 
and of all the pulpits from which human voice is ever sent forth, 
there is none from which it reaches so far as from the grave. 

THE GLORY OF A BUILDING. 

X. Nor is there, indeed, any present loss, in such respect, for fu- 
turity. Every human action gains in honor, in grace, in all true 
magnificence, by its regard to things that are to come. It is the far 
sight, the quiet and confident patience, that, above all other attri- 
butes, separate man from man, and near him to his Maker; and 
there is no action nor art, whose majesty we may not measure by 
this test. Therefore, when we build, let us think that we build for 
ever. Let it not be for present delight, nor for present use alone; 
let it be such work as our descendants will thank us for, and let us 
think, as we lay stone on stone, that a time is to come when those 
stones will be held sacred because our hands have touched them, 
and that men will say as they look upon the labor and wrought 
substance of them, "See! this our fathers did for us." For, indeed, 
the greatest glory of a building is not in its stones, or in its gold. 
Its glory is in its Age, and in that deep sense of voicefulness, of 
stern watching, of mysterious sympathy, nay, even of approval or 
condemnation, which we feel in walls that have long been washed 
by the passing waves of humanity. It is in their lasting witness 
against men, in their quiet contrast with the transitional character 
of all things, in the strength which, through the lapse of seasons 
and times, and the decline and birth of dynasties, and the chang- 
ing of the face of the earth, and of the limits of the sea, maintains 
its sculptured shapeliness for a time insuperable, connects forgotten 
and following ages with each other, and half constitutes the iden- 
tity, as it concentrates the sympathy, of nations ; it is in that golden 
stain of time, that we are to look for the real light, and color, and 
preciousness of architecture; and it is not until a building has as- 
sumed this character, till it has been entrusted with the fame, and 
hallowed by the deeds of men, till its walls have been witnesses of 
suffering, and its pillars rise out of the shadows of death, that its 
existence, more lasting as it is than that of the natural objects of 
the world around it, can be gifted with even so much as these pos- 
sess of language and of life. 



RELIGIOUS LIGHT IN ARCHITECTURE 227 

CHAP. VII. THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE. 

M^HAT MEN CALL LIBERTY. 

I. It has been my endeavor to show how every form of noble 
architecture is in some sort the embodiment of the PoHty, Life, His- 
tory, and Religious Faith of nations. Once or twice in doing this, I 
have named a principle to which I would now assign a definite place 
among those which direct that embodiment ; the last place, not only 
as that to which its own humility would incline, but rather as be- 
longing to it in the aspect of the crowning grace of all the rest ; that 
principle, I mean, to which Polity owes its stability, Life its happi- 
ness, Faith its acceptance, Creation its continuance, — Obedience. 

Nor is it the least among the sources of more serious satisfaction 
which I have found in the pursuit of a subject that at first ap- 
peared to bear but slightly on the grave interests of mankind, that 
the conditions of material perfection which it leads me in con- 
clusion to consider, furnish a strange proof how false is the con- 
ception, how frantic the pursuit, of that treacherous phantom which 
men call Liberty ; most treacherous, indeed, of all phantoms ; for 
the feeblest ray of reason might surely show us, that not only its 
attainment, but its being, was impossible. There is no such thing 
in the universe. There can never be. The stars have it not; the 
earth has it not ; the sea has it not ; and we men have the mockery 
and semblance of it only for our heaviest punishment. 

LAW GREATER THAN LIBERTY. 

In one of the noblest poems^ for its imagery and its music belong- 
ing to the recent school of our literature, the writer has sought in 
the aspect of inanimate nature the expression of that Liberty which, 
having once loved, he had seen among men in its true dyes of dark- 
ness. But with what strange fallacy of interpretation I since in 
one noble line of his invocation he has contradicted the assump- 
tions of the rest, and acknowledged the presence of a subjection, 
surely not less severe because eternal? How could he otherwise? 
since if there be any one principle more widely than another con- 
fessed by every utterance, or more sternly than another imprinted 
on every atom, of the visible creation, that principle is not Liberty, 
but Law. 

VALUE OP RESTRAINTS LIBERTY AND OBEDIENCE. 

II. The enthusiast would reply that by Liberty he meant the 
Law of Liberty. Then why use the single and misunderstood word? 
If by liberty you mean chastisement of the passions, discipline of 
the intellect, subjection of the will; if you mean the fear of in- 

1 Coleridge's Ode to France. 



228 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

flicting, the shame of committing a wrong; if you mean respect 
for all who are in authority, and consideration for all who are in 
dependence; veneration for the good, mercy to the evil, sympathy 
with the weak; if you mean watchfulness over all thoughts, tem- 
perance in all pleasures, and perseverance in all toils ; if you mean, 
in a word, that Service which is defined in the liturgy of the Eng- 
lish church to be perfect Freedom, why do you name this by the 
same word by which the luxurious mean license, and the reckless 
mean change ; by which the rogue means rapine, and the fool equal- 
ity, by which the proud mean anarchy, and the malignant mean 
violence? Call it by any name rather than this, but its best and 
truest is. Obedience. Obedience is, indeed, founded on a kind of 
freedom, else it would become mere subjugation, but that free- 
dom is only granted that obedience may be more perfect ; and thus, 
w^hile a measure of licence is necessary to exhibit the individual 
energies of things, the fairness and pleasantness and perfection of 
them all consist in their Restraint. Compare a river that has burst 
its banks with one that is bound by them, and the clouds that are 
scattered over the face of the whole heaven with those that are 
marshalled into ranks and orders by its winds. So that though 
restraint, utter and unrelaxing, can never be comely, this is not 
because it is in itself an evil, but only because, when too great, it 
overpowers the nature of the thing restrained, and so counteracts 
the other laws of which that nature is itself composed. And the 
balance wherein consists the fairness of creation is between the laws 
of life and being in the things governed and the laws of general 
sway to which they are subjected; and the suspension or infringe- 
ment of either kind of law, 'or, literally, disorder, is equivalent 
to, and synonymous with, disease ; while the increase of both honor 
and beauty is habitually on the side of restraint (or the action of 
superior law) rather than of character (or the action of inherent 
law). The noblest word in the catalogue of social virtue is ''Loy- 
alty," and the sweetest which men have learned in the pastures of 
the wilderness is "Fold," 



GREAT BODIES OBEY LAW. 

III. Nor is this all; but we may observe, that exactly in propor- 
tion to the majesty of things in the scale of being, is the complete- 
ness of their obedience to the laws that are set over them. Gravita- 
tion is less quietly, less instantly obeyed by a grain of dust than it 
is by the sun and moon ; and the ocean falls and flows under influ- 
ences which the lake and river do not recognize. So also in estimat- 
ing the dignity of any action or occupation of men, there is per- 
haps no better test than the question "are its laws strait?" For their 
severity will probably be commensurate with the greatness of the 
numbers whose labor it concentrates or whose interest it concerns. 



RELIGIOUS LIGHT IN ARCHITECTURE 229 

god's ways of working and man's need op work. 

VTTI. All the horror, distress, and tumult which oppress the 
foreign nations, are traceable, among the other secondary causes 
through which God is working out His will upon them, to the sim- 
ple one of their not having enough to do. I am not blind to the 
distress among their operatives; nor do I deny the nearer and vis- 
ibly active causes of the movement: the recklessness of villainy in 
the leaders of revolt, the absence of common moral principle in 
the upper classes, and of common courage and honesty in the heads 
of governments. But these causes themselves are ultimately trace- 
able to a deeper and simpler one : the recklessness of the demagogue, 
the immorality of the middle class, and the effeminacy and treach- 
ery of the noble, are traceable in all these nations to the common- 
est and most fruitful cause of calamity in households — idleness. 
We think too much in our benevolent efforts, more multiplied and 
more vain day by day, of bettering men by giving them advice and 
instruction. There are few who will take either: the chief thing 
they need is occupation. I do not mean work in the sense of bread, 
■ — I mean work in the sense of mental interest ; for those who either 
are placed above the necessity of labor for their bread, or who will 
not work although they should. . . . There are multitudes of 
idle semi-gentlemen who ought to be shoemakers and carpenters; 
but since they will not be these so long as they can help it, the 
business of the philanthropist is to find them some other employ- 
ment than disturbing governments. It is of no use to tell them they 
are fools, and that they will only make themselves miserable in the 
end as well as others: if they have nothing else to do, they will do 
mischief; and the man who will not work, and who has no means 
of intellectual pleasure, is as sure to become an instrument of evil 
as if he had sold himself bodily to Satan, 



Ill 

THE STONES OF VENICE. 

Three Vols. (1851-1853.) 

Vol. I. The Foundations. 
Vol. II. The Sea Stories. 
Vol. III. The Fall. 

"The Stones of Venice," consisting of three large volumes of 
nearly four hundred pages each, is a veritable mine of wealth on 
the subject of Architecture. From the time when, at sixteen, Rus- 
kin first visited Venice, that ancient city furnished him with sug- 
gestion and illustration of his favorite theme. So that here we have 
one work, at least, of our Author which bears a fitting and easily 
explained title. The whole work abounds in felicitous passages of 
moral and religious value. I'n making the following selections, we 
are inviting the lover of the beautiful and true, to possess them- 
selves of the whole work, and this invitation should find especial in- 
terest to the student of architecture, for here, as the author says, 
are "taught the laws of constructive art and the dependence of all 
human work or edifice, for its beauty, on the happy life of the 
workman."^ 

THE STONES OF VENICE. VOL. I. 

WHY NATIONS FALL ! 

VII. Throughout her career, the victories of Venice, and, at 
many periods of it, her safety, were purchased by individual hero- 
ism; and the man who exalted or saved her was sometimes (often- 
est) her king, sometimes a noble, sometimes a citizen. To him no 
matter, nor to her: the real question is, not so much what names 
they bore, or with what powers they were entrusted, as how they 
were trained; how they were made masters of themselves, servants 
of their country, patient of distress, impatient of dishonor; and 
what was the true reason of the change from the time when she 

iFors Clavigera, Letter 78. 

230 



RELIGIOUS LIGHT IN ARCHITECTURE 231 

could find saviours among those whom she had cast into prison, to 
that when the voices of her own children commanded her to sign 
covenant with Death. — Ch. I. 

VIII. The evidence which I shall be able to deduce from the 
arts of Venice will be both frequent and irrefragable, that the de- 
cline of her political prosperity was exactly coincident with that 
of domestic and individual religion. — Ch. I. 



CORRUPTION AS SEEN IN ART. 

XXXVI. Against the corrupted papacy arose two great divisions 
of adversaries, Protestants in Germany and England, Rationalists 
in France and Italy; the one requiring the purification of religion, 
the other its destruction. The Protestant kept the religion, but 
cast aside the heresies of Rome, and with them her arts, by which 
last rejection he injured his own character, cramped his intellect 
in refusing to it one of its noblest exercises, and materially dimin- 
ished his influence. It may be a serious question how far the Paus- 
ing of the Reformation has been a consequence of this error. 

The Rationalist kept the arts and cast aside the religion. This 
rationalistic art is the art commonly called Renaissance, marked 
by a return to pagan systems, not to adopt them and hallow them 
for Christianity, but to rank itself under them as an imitator and 
pupil. — Ch. I. 

XXXVII. Instant degradation followed in every direction, — a 
flood of folly and hypocrisy. Mythologies ill understood at first, 
then perverted into feeble sensualities, take the place of the repre- 
sentations of Christian subjects, which had become blasphemous un- 
der the treatment of men like the Caracci. Gods without power, 
satyrs without rusticity, nymphs without innocence, men without 
humanity, gather into idiot groups upon the polluted canvas, and 
scenic affectations encumber the streets with preposterous marble. 
Lower and lower declines th< level of abused intellect; the base 
school of landscape gradually usurps the place of the historical 
painting, which had sunk into purient pedantry, — the Alsatian 
sublimities of Salvator, the confectionery idealities of Claude, the 
dull manufacture of Gaspar and Canaletto, south of the Alps, and 
on the north the patient devotion of besotted lives to delineation of 
bricks and fogs, fat cattle and ditch-water. And thus Christianity 
and morality, courage, and intellect, and art all crumbling together 
into one wreck, we are hurried on to the fall of Italy, the revolu- 
tion in France, and the condition of art in England. — Ch. I. 

MORAL VIRTUES OF BUILDING. 

I, In the main, we require from buildings, as from men, two 
kinds of goodness: first, the doing their practical duty well: then 



232 ' THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

that they be graceful and pleasing in doing it; which last is itself 
another form of duty. 

Then the practical duty divides itself into two branches, — ^acting 
and talking: — acting, as to defend us from weather or violence; 
talking, as the duty of monuments or tombs, to record facts and 
express feelings; or of churches, temples, public edifices, treated as 
books of history, to tell such history clearly and forcibly. 

We have thus, altogether, three great branches of architectural 
virtue, and we require of any building, — 

1. That it act well, and do the things it was intended to do in 
the best way. 

2. That it speak well, and say the things it was intended to say 
in the best words. 

3. That it look well, and please us by its presence, whatever 
it has to do or say. — Ch. II. 

DIVINE AND HUMAN ARCHITECTURE. 

rV. We have a worthier way of looking at human than at di- 
vine architecture: much of the value both of construction and dec- 
oration, in the edifices of men, depends upon our being led by the 
thing produced or adorned, to some contemplation of the powers of 
mind concerned in its creation or adornment. We are not so led 
by divine work, but are content to rest in the contemplation of the 
thing created. We take pleasure, or should take pleasure, in archi- 
tectural construction altogether as the manifestation of an admir- 
able human intelligence; it is not the strength, not the size, not 
the finish of the work which we are to venerate: rocks are always 
stronger, mountains always larger, all natural objects more finished; 
but it is the intelligence and resolution of man in overcoming 
physical difficulty which are to be the source of our pleasure and 
subject of our praise. And again, in decoration or beauty, it is 
less the actual loveliness of the thing produced, than the choice 
and invention concerned in the production, which are to delight 
us; the love and the thoughts of the workman more than his work; 
his work must always be imperfect, but his thoughts and affections 
may be true and deep. — Ch. II. 

SPIRITUAL ENNOBLEMENT. 

X. All the divisions of humanity are noble or brutal, immortal 
or mortal, according to the degree of their sanctification : and there 
is no part of the man which is not immortal and divine when it 
is once given to God, and no part of him which is not mortal by the 
second death, and brutal before the first, when it is withdrawn from 
God. For to what shall we trust for our distinction from the beasts 
that perish? To our higher intellect? — yet are we not bidden to be 
wise as the serpent, and to consider the ways of the ant? — or to our 



RELIGIOUS LIGHT IN ARCHITECTURE 233 

affections? nay; these are more shared by the lower animals than 
our intelligence. Hamlet leaps into the grave of his beloved, and 
leaves it, — a dog had stayed. Humanity and immortality consist 
neither in reason, nor in love; not in the body, nor in the animation 
of the heart of it, nor in the thoughts and stirrings of the brain of 
it, — but in the dedication of them all to Him who will raise them 
up at the last day. — Ch. 11. 

THE JOY OF GIVING MONEY. 

XVI. Half the evil in this world comes from people not knowing 
what they do like, not deliberately setting themselves to find out 
what they really enjoy. All people enjoy giving away money, for 
instance : they don't know that, — they rather think they like keep- 
ing it; and they do keep it under this false impression, often to 
their great discomfort. Every body likes to do good; but not one 
in a hundred finds this out. Multitudes think they like to do 
evil ; yet no man ever really enjoyed doing evil since God made the 
world. 

THE ENCHANTMENT OP DISTANCE. 

XVII. Are not all natural things, it may be asked, as lovely 
near as far away? Nay, not so. Look at the clouds, and watch 
the delicate sculpture of their alabaster sides, and the rounded lus- 
tre of their magnificent rolling. They are meant to be beheld far 
away; they were shaped for their place, high above your head; ap- 
proach them, and they fuse into vague mists, or whirl away in 
fierce fragments of thunderous vapor. Look at the crest of the Alp, 
from the far-away plains over which its light is cast, whence human 
souls have communion with it by their myriads. The child looks 
up to it in the dawn, and the husbandman in the burden and heat 
of the day, and the old man in the going down of the sun, and it 
is to them all as the celestial city on the world's horizon ; dyed with 
the depth of heaven, and clothed with the calm of eternity. There 
was it set, for holy dominion, by Him who marked for the sun his 
journey, and bade the moon know her going down. It was built 
for its place in the far-off sky ; approach it, and as the sound of the 
voice of man dies away about its foundations, and the tide of human 
life shallowed upon the vast aerial, is at last met by the Eternal 
^'Here shall thy waves be stayed," the glory of its aspect fades into 
blanched fearfulness; its purple walls are rent into grisly rocks, 
its silver fretwork saddened into wasting snow, the storm-brands 
of ages are on its breast, the ashes of its own ruin lie solemnly on its 
white raiment. . . . For every distance from the eye there 
is a peculiar kind of beauty, or a different system of lines of form ; 
the sight of that beauty is reserved for that distance, and for that 
alone. If you approach nearer, that kind of beauty is lost, and 



234 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

another succeeds, to be disorganised and reduced to strange and in- 
comprehensible means and appliances in its turn. If you desire 
to perceive the great harmonies of the form of a rocky mountain, 
you must not ascend upon its sides. All is there disorder and acci- 
dent, or seems so; sudden starts of its shattered beds hither and 
thither; ugly struggles of unexpected strength from under the 
ground; fallen fragments, toppling one over another into more 
helpless fall. Retire from it, and, as your eye commands it more 
and more, as you see the ruined mountain world with a wider 
glance, behold! dim sympathies begin to busy themselves in the 
disjointed mass; line binds itself into stealthy fellowship with line; 
group by group, the helpless fragments gather themselves into or- 
dered companies ; new captains of hosts and masses of battalions be- 
come visible, one by one, and far away answers of foot to foot, and 
of bone to bone, until the powerless chaos is seen risen up with 
girded loins, and not one piece of all the unregarded heap could 
now be spared from the mystic whole. — Ch. XXI. 

THE UNFATHOMABLE UNIVERSE. 

V. Is there, then, nothing to be done by man's art? Have we 
only to copy, and again copy, for ever, the imagery of the uni- 
verse? Not so. We have work to do upon it ; there is not any one of us 
so simple, nor so feeble, but he has work to do upon it. But the 
work is not to improve, but to explain. This infinite universe is 
unfathomable, inconceivable, in its whole; every human creature 
must slowly spell out, and long contemplate, such part of it as 
may be possible for him to reach ; then set forth what he has learned 
of it for those beneath him; extricating it from infinity, as one 
gathers a violet out of grass ; one does not improve either violet or 
grass in gathering it, but one makes the flower visible; and then 
the human being has to make its power upon his own heart visi- 
ble also, and to give it the honor of the good thoughts it has raised 
up in him, and to write upon it the history of his own soul. And 
sometimes he may be able to do more than this, and to set it in 
strange lights, and display it in a thousand ways before unknown : 
ways specially directed to necessary and noble purposes, for which 
he had to choose instruments out of the wide armory of God. — Ch. 
XXX. 

IMPROVING THE WORD OF GOD. 

V. All this he may do: and in this he is only doing what every 
Christian has to do with the written, as well as the created word, 
"rightly dividing the word of truth." Out of the infinity of 
the written word, he has also to gather and set forth things new 
and old, to choose them for the season and the work that are be- 
fore him, to explain and manifest them to others, with such il- 



RELIGIOUS LIGHT IN ARCHITECTURE 235 

lustration and enforcement as may be in his power, and to crown 
them with the history of what, by them, God has done for his soul. 
And, in doing this, is he improving the Word of God? Just such 
difference as there is between the sense in which a minister may 
be said to improve a text, to the people's comfort, and the sense in 
which an atheist might declare that he could improve the Book, 
which, if any man shall add unto, there shall be added unto him 
the plagues that are written therein; just such difference is there 
between that which, with respect to Nature, man is, in his hum- 
bleness, called upon to do, and that which, in his insolence, he 
imagines himself capable of doing. — Ch. XXX. 



THE STONES OF VENICE, VOL. II. 

THE INSCRUTABLE WISDOM OP GOD. 

VII. If, two thousand years ago, we had been permitted to watch 
the slow settling of the slime of those turbid rivers into the pol- 
luted sea, and the gaining upon its deep and fresh waters of the 
lifeless, impassable, unvoyageable plain, how little could we have 
understood the purpose with which those islands were shaped out of 
the void, and the torpid waters enclosed with their desolate walls 
of sand ! How little could we have known, any more than of what 
now seems to us most distressful, dark, and objectless, the glorious 
aim which was then in the mind of Him in whose hand are all the 
corners of the earth! how little imagined that in the laws which 
were stretching forth the gloomy margins of those fruitless banks, 
and feeding the bitter grass among their shallows, there was indeed 
a preparation, and the only preparation possible, for the found- 
ing of a city which was to be set like a golden clasp on the girdle 
of the earth, to write her history on the white scrolls of the sea-surges, 
and to word it in their thunder, and to gather and give forth, in 
world-wide pulsation, the glory of the West and of the East, from 
the burning heart of her Fortitude and Splendor. — Ch. I. 

HOW TO HEAR A SERMON. 

XrV. There are two ways of regarding a sermon, either as a 
human composition, or a Divine message. If we look upon it entirely 
as the first, and require our clergymen to finish it with their utmost 
care and learning, for our better delight whether of ear or intellect, 
we shall necessarily be led to expect much formality and stateliness 
in its delivery: but we shall at the same time consider the treatise 
thus prepared as something to which it is our duty to listen with- 
out restlessness for half an hour or three quarters, but which, when 
that duty has been decorously performed, we may dismiss from our 



236 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

minds in happy confidence of being provided with another when 
next it shall be necessary. But if once we begin to regard the 
preacher, whatever his faults, as a man sent with a message to us, 
which it is a matter of life or death whether we hear or refuse; if 
we look upon him as set in charge over many spirits in danger 
of ruin, and having allowed to him but an hour or two in the seven 
days to speak to them; if we make some endeavor to conceive how 
precious these hours ought to be to him, a small vantage on the 
side of God after his flock have been exposed for six days together 
to the full weight of the world's temptation, and he has been forced 
to watch the thorn and the thistle springing in their hearts, and 
to see what wheat had been scattered there snatched from the way- 
side by this wild bird and the other, and at last, when breathless 
and weary with the week's labor they give him this interval of im- 
perfect and languid hearing, he has but thirty minutes to get at the 
separate hearts of a thousand men, to convince them of all their 
weaknesses, to shame them for all their sins, to warn them of all 
their dangers, to try by this way and that to stir the hard fastenings 
of those doors where the Master himself has stood and knocked yet 
none opened, and to call at the openings of those dark streets where 
Wisdom herself hath stretched forth her hands and no man re- 
garded, — ^thirty minutes to raise the dead in, — let us but once un- 
derstand and feel this, and we shall look with changed eyes upon 
that frippery of gay furniture about the place from which the mes- 
sage of judgment must be delivered, which either breathes upon the 
dry bones that they may live, or, if ineffectual, remains recorded 
in condemnation, perhaps against the utterer and listener alike, but 
assuredly against one of them. We shall not so easily bear with the 
silk and gold upon the seat of judgment, nor with ornament of 
oratory in the mouth of the messenger : we shall wish that his words 
may be simple, even when they are sweetest, and the place from 
which he speaks like a marble rock in the desert, about which the 
people have gathered in their thirst. — Ch. 11. 

THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

XVI. In the minds of all early Christians the Church itself was 
most frequently symbolized under the image of a ship, of which 
the bishop was the pilot. Consider the force which this symbol 
would assume in the imaginations of men to whom the spiritual 
Church had become an ark of refuge in the midst of a destruction 
hardly less terrible than that from which the eight souls were saved 
of old, a destruction in which the wrath of man had become as broad 
as the earth and as merciless as the sea, and who saw the actual and 
literal edifice of the Church raised up, itself like an ark in the 
midst of the waters. No marvel if with the surf of the Adriatic 
rolling between them and the shores of their birth, from which they 



RELIGIOUS LIGHT IN ARCHITECTURE 237 

were separated for ever, they should have looked upon each other 
as the disciples did when the storm came down on the Tiberias Lake, 
and have yielded ready and loving obedience to those who ruled them 
in His name, who had there rebuked the winds and commanded 
stillness to the sea. And if the stranger would yet learn in what spirit 
it was that the dominion of Venice was begun, and in what strength 
she went forth conquering and to conquer, let him not seek to es- 
timate the wealth of her arsenals or number of her armies, nor look 
upon the pageantry of her palaces, nor enter into the secrets of her 
councils ; but let him ascend the highest tier of the stern ledges that 
sweep round the altar of Torcello, and then, looking as the pilot did 
of old along the marble ribs of the goodly temple-ship, let him re- 
people its veined deck with the shadows of its dead mariners, and 
strive to feel in himself the strength of heart that was kindled within 
them, when first, after the pillars of it had settled in the sand, and 
the roof of it had been closed against the angry sky that was still 
reddened by the fires of their homesteads, — first, within the shelter 
of its knitted walls, amidst the murmur of the waste of waves and 
the beating of the wings of the sea-birds round the rock that was 
strange to them, — rose that ancient hymn, in the power of their 
gathered voices: 

The sea is His, and He made it : 

And His Hands prepared the dry land. 

—Ch. IL 

HOW MEN WORSHIP. 

XL. There is a wider division of men than that into Christian 
and Pagan: before we ask what a man worships, we have to ask 
whether he worships at all. Observe Christ's own words on this 
head: "God is a spirit; and they that worship Him must worship 
Him in spirit, and in truth." The worshipping in spirit comes first, 
and it does not necessarily imply the worshipping in truth. There- 
fore, there is first the broad division of men into Spirit worshippers 
and Flesh worshippers; and then, of the Spirit worshippers, the 
farther division into Christian and Pagan, — worshippers in False- 
hood or in Truth. I therefore, for the moment, omit all inquiry 
how far the Mariolatry of the early church did indeed eclipse Christ, 
or what measure of deeper reverence for the Son of God was still 
felt through all the grosser forms of Madonna worship. Let that 
worship be taken at its worst; let the goddess of this dome of Mu- 
rano be looked upon as just in the same sense an idol as the Athene 
of the Acropolis, or the Syrian Queen of Heaven ; and then, on this 
darkest assumption, balance well the difference between those who 
worship and those who worship not; — that difference which there 
is in the sight of God, in all ages, between the calculating, smil- 
ing, self-sustained, self-governed man, and the believmg, weepmg, 
wondering, struggling. Heaven-governed man; — between tb3 men 



238 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

who say in their hearts "there is no God," and those who acknowl- 
edge a God at every step, "if haply they might feel after Him and 
find Him." For that is indeed the difference which we shall find 
in the end, between the builders of this day and the builders on that 
sand island long ago. They did honor something out of them- 
selves ; they did believe in spiritual presence judging, animating, re- 
deeming them; they built to its honor and for its habitation; and 
were content to pass away in nameless multitudes, so only that the 
labor of their hands might fix in the sea-wilderness a throne for 
their guardian angel. In this was their strength, and there was in- 
deed a Spirit walking with them on the waters, though they 
could not discern the form thereof, though the Master's voice came 
not to them, "It is l."—Ch. III. 

DEVELOPMENT OP CHURCHES AND DWELLING HOUSES. 

LIII. Wherever Christian church architecture has been good 
and lovely, it has been merely the perfect development of the com- 
mon dwelling-house architecture of the period; that when the 
pointed arch was used in the street, it was used in the church ; when 
the round arch was used in the street, it was used in the church; 
when the pinnacle was set over the garret window, it was set over 
the belfry tower ; when the flat roof was used for the drawing-room, 
it was used for the nave. There is no sacredness in round arches, 
nor in pointed ; none in pinnacles, nor in buttresses ; none in pillars, 
nor in traceries. Churches were larger than most other buildings, 
because they had to hold more people ; they were more adorned than 
most other buildings, because they were safer from violence, and 
were the fitting subjects of devotional offering: but they were never 
built in any separate, mystical, and religious style; they were built 
in the manner that was common and familiar to everybody at the 
time. The flamboyant traceries that adorn the facade of Rouen 
Cathedral had once their fellows in every window of every house in 
the market-place ; the sculptures that adorn the porches of St. Mark's 
had once their match on the walls of every palace on the Grand 
Canal ; and the only difference between the church and the dwelling- 
house was, that there existed a symbolical meaning in the distribu- 
tion of the parts of all buildings meant for worship, and that the 
painting or sculpture was, in the one case, less frequently of pro- 
fane subject than in the other. A more severe distinction cannot 
be drawn : for secular history was constantly introduced into church 
architecture; and sacred history or allusion generally formed at 
least one half of the ornament of the dwelling-house. — Ch. IV. 

FITNESS OF SPLENDID CHURCH ORNAMENTS. 

LV. So long as our streets are walled with barren brick, and our 
eyes rest continually, in our daily life, on objects utterly ugly, or 



RELIGIOUS LIGHT IN ARCHITECTURE 239 

of inconsistent and meaningless design, it may be a doubtful ques- 
tion whether the faculties of eye and mind which are capable of 
perceiving beauty, having been left without food during the whole 
of our active life, should be suddenly feasted upon entering a place 
of worship; and color, and music, and sculpture should delight the 
senses, and stir the curiosity of men unaccustomed to such appeal, 
at the moment when they are required to compose themselves for 
acts of devotion; — this, I say, may be a doubtful question; but it 
cannot be a question at all, that if once familiarized with beautiful 
form and color, and accustomed to see in whatever human hands 
have executed for us, even for the lowest services, evidence of noble 
thought and admirable skill, we shall desire to see this evidence 
also in whatever is built or labored for the house of prayer ; that the 
absence of the accustomed loveliness would disturb instead of as- 
sisting devotion ; and that we should feel it as vain to ask whether, 
with our own house full of goodly craftsmanship, we should wor- 
ship God in a house destitute of it, as to ask whether a pilgrim 
whose day's journey had led him through fair woods and by sweet 
waters, must at evening turn aside into some barren place to pray. — 
Ch. IV. 

LOVE OF ART NOT NECESSARY TO THE SPIRITUAL MINDED. 

LVIII. I cannot answer for the experience of others, but I never 
yet met with a Christian whose heart was thoroughly set upon the 
w^orld to come, and, so far as human judgment could pronounce, 
perfect and right before God, who cared about art at all. I have 
known several very noble Christian men who loved it intensely, 
but in them there was always traceable some entanglement of the 
thoughts with the matters of this world, causing them to fall into 
strange distresses and doubts, and often leading them into what they 
themselves would confess to be errors in understanding, or even 
failures in duty. I do not say that these men may not, many of 
them, be in very deed nobler than those whose conduct is more con- 
sistent; they may be more tender in the tone of all their feelings, 
and farther-sighted in soul, and for that very reason exposed to 
greater trials and fears, than those whose hardier frame and natur- 
ally narrower vision enable them with less effort to give their hands 
to God and walk with Him. But still, the general fact is indeed 
so, that I have never known a man who seemed altogether right 
and calm in faith, who seriously cared about art ; and when casually 
moved by it, it is quite impossible to say beforehand by what class of 
art this impression will on such men be made. — Ch. IV. 

CHURCH WALLS AS EDUCATORS. 

LXIT. I have above spoken of the whole church as a great Book 
of Common Prayer ; the mosaics were its illuminations and the com- 



240 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

mon people of the time were taught their Scripture history by 
means of them, more impressively perhaps, though far less fully, 
than ours are now by Scripture reading. They had no other Bible, 
and — Protestants do not often enough consider this — could have 
no other. We find it somewhat difficult to furnish our poor with 
printed Bibles; consider what the difficulty must have been when 
they could be given only in manuscript. The walls of the church 
necessarily became the poor man's Bible, and a picture was more 
easily read upon the walls than a chapter. — Ch. IV. 

VENICE SINNED AGAINST LIGHT. 

LXXI. Shall we not look with changed temper down the long 
perspective of St. Mark's Place towards the sevenfold gates and 
glowing domes of its temple, when we know with what solemn 
purpose the shafts of it were lifted above the pavement of the popu- 
lous square? Men met there from all countries of the earth, for 
traffic or for pleasure ; but, above the crowd swaying for ever to and 
fro in the restlessness of avarice or thirst of delight, was seen per- 
petually the glory of the temple, attesting to them, whether they 
would hear or whether they would forbear, that there was one treas- 
ure which the merchantmen might buy without a price, and one 
delight better than all others, in the word and the statutes of God. 
Not in the wantonness of wealth, not in vain ministry to the de- 
sire of the eyes or the pride of life, were those marbles hewn into 
transparent strength, and those arches arrayed in the colors of the 
iris. There is a message written in the dyes of them, that once was 
written in blood; and a sound in the echoes of their vaults, that 
one day shall fill the vault of heaven, — "He shall return, to do 
judgment and justice." The strength of Venice was given her, so 
long as she remembered this: her destruction found her when she 
had forgotten this; and it found her irrevocably, because she for- 
got it without excuse. Never had city a more glorious Bible. Among 
the nations of the North, a rude and shadowy sculpture filled their 
temples with confused and hardly legible imagery; but, for her, the 
skill and the treasures of the East had gilded every letter, and il- 
lumined every page, till the Book-Temple shone from afar off like 
the star of the Magi. In other cities, the meetings of the people 
were often in places withdrawn from religious association, subject 
to violence and to change; and on the grass of the dangerous ram- 
part, and in the dust of the troubled street, there were deeds done 
and counsels taken, which, if we cannot justify, we may sometimes 
forgive. But the sins of Venice, whether in her palace or in her 
piazza, were done with the Bible at her right hand. The walls on 
•which its testimony was written were separated but by a few inches 
of marble from those which guarded the secrets of her councils, or 
confined the victims of her policy. And when in her last hours 



RELIGIOUS LIGHT IN ARCHITECTURE 241 

she threw off all shame and all restraint, and the great square of the 
city became filled with the madness of the whole earth, be it re- 
membered how much her sin was greater, because it was done in 
the face of the House of God, burning with the letters of His Law. 
Mountebank and masquer laughed their laugh, and went their way ; 
and a silence has followed them, not unforetold; for amidst them 
all, through century after century of gathering vanity and fester- 
ing guilt, that white dome of St. Mark's had uttered in the dead 
ear of Venice, "Know thou, that for all these things God will bring 
thee into judgment." — Ch. IV. 

THE MORAL RELATION OF COLOR. 

XXX. The fact is, that, of all God's gifts to the sight of man, 
color is the holiest, the most divine, the most solemn. We speak 
rashly of gay color, and sad color, for color cannot at once be good 
and gay. All good color is in some degree pensive, the loveliest i3 
melancholy, and the purest and most thoughtful minds are those 
which love color the most. — Ch. V. 

XXXII. I know no law more severely without exception than 
this of the connexion of pure color with profound and noble 
thought. The late Flemish pictures, shallow in conception and 
obscene in subject, are always sober in color. But the early relig- 
ious painting of the Flemings is as brilliant in hue as it is holy in 
thought. . . . The builders of our great cathedrals veiled 
their casements and wrapped their pillars with one robe of purple 
splendor. The builders of the luxurious Renaissance left their pal- 
aces filled only with cold white light, and in the paleness of their 
native stone. — Ch. V. 



THE DIVINE NATURE TYPIFIED IN COLOR. 

XXXIII. Nor does it seem difficult to discern a noble reason for 
this universal law. In that heavenly circle which binds the stat- 
utes of color upon the front of the sky, when it became the sign of 
the covenant of peace, the pure hues of divided light were sancti- 
fied to the human heart for ever; nor this, it would seem, by mere 
arbitrary appointment, but in consequence of the fore-ordained and 
marvellous constitution of those hues into a sevenfold, or, more 
strictly still, a threefold order, typical of the Divine nature itself. — > 
Ch. V. 

man's INDIFFERENCE TO WASTE AND LOSS. 

XXXVI. There is no subject of thought more melancholy, more 
wonderful, than the way in which God permits so often His best 
gifts to be trodden under foot of men, His richest treasures to be 
wasted by the moth, and the mightiest influences of His Spirit, 



242 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

given but once in the world's history, to be quenched and short- 
ened by miseries of chance and guilt. I do not wonder at what 
men Suffer, but I wonder often at what they Lose. We may see 
how good rises out of pain and evil; but the dead, naked, eyeless 
loss, what good comes of that? The fruit struck to the earth be- 
fore its ripeness; the glowing life and goodly purpose dissolved 
away in sudden death; the words, half spoken, choked upon the 
lips with clay forever; or, stranger than all, the whole majesty of 
humanity raised to its fulness, and every gift and power necessary 
for a given purpose, at a given moment, centered in one man, and all 
this perfected blessing permitted to be refused, perverted, crushed, 
cast aside by those who need it most, — the city which is Not set 
on a hill, the candle that giveth light to None that are in the house : 
these are the heaviest mysteries of this strange world, and, it seems 
to me, those which mark its curse the most. And it is true that the 
power with which this Venice had been entrusted, was perverted, 
when at its highest, in a thousand miserable ways; still, it was pos- 
sessed by her alone; to her all hearts have turned which could be 
moved by its manifestation, and none without being made stronger 
and nobler by what her hand had wrought. That mighty Land- 
scape, of dark mountains that guard the horizon with their purple 
towers, and solemn forests, that gather their weight of leaves, 
bronzed with sunshine, not with age, into those gloomy masses 
fixed in heaven, which storm and frost have power no more to 
shake, or shed; — that mighty Humanity, so perfect and so proud, 
that hides no weakness beneath the mantle, and gains no greatness 
from the diadem; the majesty of thoughtful form, on which the 
dust of gold and flame of jewels are dashed as the sea-spray upon 
the rock, and still the great Manhood seems to stand bare against 
the blue sky; — that mighty Mythology, which fills the daily walks 
of men with spiritual companionship, and beholds the protecting 
angels break with their burning presence through the arrow-flights 
of battle: — measure the compass of that field of creation, weigh the 
value of the inheritance that Venice thus left to the nations of Eu- 
rope, and then judge if so vast, so beneficent a power could indeed 
have been rooted in dissipation or decay. It was when she wore 
the ephod of the priest, not the motley of the masquer, that the fire 
fell upon her from heaven ; and she saw the first rays of it through 
the rain of her own tears, when, as the barbaric deluge ebbed from 
the hills of Italy, the circuit of her palaces, and the orb of her 
fortunes, rose together, like the Iris, painted upon the Cloud. — 
Ch. V. 

CHRISTIANITY APPEALS TO THE INDIVIDUAL SOUL. 

IX. The Greek gave to the lower workman no subject which he 
could not perfectly execute. The Assyrian gave him subjects which 
he could only execute imperfectly, but fixed a legal standard for 
his imperfection. Tlio v.-orkman was, in both systems, a slave. 



RELIGIOUS LIGHT IN ARCHITECTURE 243 

X. But in the medieval, or especially Christian, system of orna- 
ment, this slavery is done away with altogether; Christianity hav- 
ing recognized, in small things as well as great, the individual value 
of every soul. But it not only recognizes its value; it confesses its 
imperfection, in only bestowing dignity upon the acknowledgment 
of unworthiness. That admission of lost power and fallen nature, 
which the Greek or Ninevite felt to be intensely painful, and, as far 
as might be, altogether refused, the Christian makes daily and 
hourly, contemplating the fact of it without fear, as tending, in the 
end, to God's greater glory. Therefore, to every spirit which Chris- 
tianity summons to her service, her exhortation is: Do what you 
can, and confess frankly what you are unable to do ; neither let your 
effort be shortened for fear of failure, nor your confession silenced 
for fear of shame. — Ch. VI. 



MEN NOT PERFECT AS MACHINES ARE PERFECT. 

XII. Men were not intended to work with the accuracy of tools, 
to be precise and perfect in all their actions. If you will have that 
precision out of them, and make their fingers measure degrees like 
cog-wheels, and their arms strike curves like compasses, you must 
unhumanize them. All the energy of their spirits must be given 
to make cogs and compasses of themselves. All their attention and 
strength must go to the accomplishment of the mean act. The eye 
of the soul must be bent upon the finger-point, and the soul's force 
must fill all the invisible nerves that guide it, ten hours a day, that 
it may not err from its steely precision, and so soul and sight be 
worn away, and the whole human being be lost at last — a heap 
of sawdust, so far as its intellectual work in this world is concerned ; 
saved only by its Heart, which cannot go into the form of cogs and 
compasses, but expands, after the ten hours are over, into fireside 
humanity. On the other hand, if you will make a man of the 
working creature, you cannot make a tool. Let him but begin to 
imagine, to think, to try to do anything worth doing ; and the en- 
gine-turned precision is lost at once. Out come all his roughness, 
all his dulness, all his incapability; shame upon shame, failure 
upon failure, pause after pause ; but out comes the whole majesty of 
him also ; and we know the height of it only, when we see the clouds 
settling upon him. And, whether the clouds be bright or dark, there 
-will be transfiguration behind and within them. — Ch. VI. 

MEN ARE NOT SLAVES IF THEIR SOULS ARE FREE. 

XTIT. "Men may be beaten, chained, tormented, yoked like cat- 
tle, slaughtered like summer flies, and yet remain in one sense, and 
the best sense, free. But to smother their souls within them, to 
blight and hew into rotting pollards the suckling branches of their 
human intelligence, to make the flesh and skin which, after the 



244 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

worm's work on it, is to see God, into leathern thongs to yoke ma- 
chinery with, — this it is to be slave-masters indeed ; and there might 
be more freedom in England, though her feudal lords' lightest words 
were worth men's lives, and though the blood of the vexed hus- 
bandman dropped in the furrows of her fields, than there is while 
the animation of her multitudes is sent like fuel to feed the factory 
smoke, and the strength of them is given daily to be wasted into the 
fineness of a web, or racked into the exactness of a line. — Ch. VI. 

SELF-SACRIFICE OF MEN IN EVERY AGE. 

XV. In all ages and all countries, reverence has been paid and 
sacrifice made by men to each other, not only without complaint, 
but rejoicingly; and famine, and peril, and sword, and all evil, and 
all shame, have been borne willingly in the causes of masters and 
kings; for all these gifts of the heart ennobled the men who 
gave, not less than the men who received them, and nature prompted, 
and God rewarded the sacrifice. But to feel their souls withering 
within them, unthanked, to find their whole being sunk into an un- 
recognized abyss, to be counted off into a heap of mechanism, num- 
bered with its wheels, and weighed with its hammer strokes; — this 
nature bade not, — this God blesses not, — this humanity for no long: 
time is able to endure. — Ch. VI. 

DIVISION OF LABOR SOMETIMES MEANS DIVISION OF MEN. 

XVI. We have much studied and much perfected, of late, the 
great civilized invention of the division of labor; only we give it 
a false name. It is not, truly speaking, the labor that is divided; 
but the men: — Divided into mere segments of men — broken into 
small fragments and crumbs of life ; so that all the little piece of in- 
telligence that is left in a man is not enough to make a pin, or a 
nail, but exhausts itself in making the point of a pin, or the head 
of a nail. Now it is a good and desirable thing, truly, to make many 
pins in a day ; but if we could only see with what crystal sand their 
points were polished, — sand of human soul, much to be magnified 
before it can be discerned for what it is, — we should think there 
might be some loss in it also. — Ch. VI. 

IMPERFECTION NECESSARY TO PROGRESS. 

XXIII. Accurately speaking, no good work whatever can be per- 
fect and the demand for perfection is always a sign of a misunder- 
standing of the ends of art. 

XXV. Imperfection is in some sort essential to all that we know 
of life. It is the sign of life in a mortal body, that is to say, of a 
state of progress and change. Nothing that lives is, or can be rig- 
idly perfect; part of it is decaying, part nascent. The foxglove 



RELIGIOUS LIGHT IN ARCHITECTURE 245 

blossom, — a third part bud, a third part past, a third part in full 
bloom, — is a type of the life of this world. And in all things that 
live there are certain irregularities and deficiencies which are not 
, only signs of life, but sources of beauty. No human face is exactly 
the same in its lines on each side, no leaf perfect in its lobes, no 
branch in its symmetry. All admit irregularity as they imply 
change ; and to banish imperfection is to destroy expression, to check 
exertion, to paralyse vitality. All things are literally better, love- 
lier, and more beloved for the imperfections which have been di- 
vinely appointed, that the law of human life may be Efifort, and the 
law of human judgment, Mercy. — Ch. VL 

ARCHITECTURE THE MOST HUMAN OF ALL ARTS. 

XL. A picture or poem is often little more than a feeble utterance 
of man's admiration of something out of himself; but architecture 
approaches more to a creation of his own, born of his necessities, 
and expressive of his nature. It is also, in some sort, the work of 
the whole race, while the picture or statue are the work of one only, 
in most cases more highly gifted than his fellows. And therefore 
we may expect that the first two elements of good architecture 
should be expressive of some great truths commonly belonging to 
the whole race, and necessary to be understood or felt by them in all 
their work that they do under the sun. And observe what they 
are: the confession of Imperfection and the confession of Desire of 
Change. The building of the bird and the bee needs not express 
anything like this. It is perfect and unchanging. But just be- 
cause we are something better than birds or bees, our building must 
confess that we have not reached the perfection we can imagine, 
and cannot rest in the condition we have attained. If we pretend 
to have reached either perfection or satisfaction, we have degraded 
ourselves and our work, God's work only may express that; but 
ours may never have that sentence written upon it, — "And behold, 
it was very good." — Ch. VI. 

GOOD AND EVIL IN ALL THINGS. 

LVI. In saying that nearly everything presented to us in nature 
has mingling in it of good and evil, I do not mean that nature is 
conceivably improvable, or that anything that God has made could 
be called evil, if we could see far enough into its uses, but that, with 
respect to immediate effects or appearances, it may be so, just as the 
hard rind or bitter kernel of a fruit may be an evil to the eater, 
though in the one is the protection of the fruit, and in the other 
its continuance. The Purist, therefore, does not mend nature, but 
receives from nature and from God that which is good for him; 
while the Sensualist fills himself "with the husks that the swine did 
eat."— C/i. VI. 



246 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

LVII. We know more certainly every day that whatever appears 
to us harmful in the universe has some beneficent or necessary op- 
eration; that the storm which destroys a harvest brightens the sun- 
beams for harvests yet unsown, and that the volcano which buries 
a city preserves a thousand from destruction. But the evil is not 
for the time less fearful, because we have learned it to be necessary ; 
and we easily understand the timidity or the tenderness of the spirit 
which would withdraw itself from the presence of destruction, and 
create in its imagination a world of which the peace should be un- 
broken, in which the sky should not darken nor the sea rage, in 
which the leaf should not change nor the blossom wither._ That 
man is greater, however, who contemplates with an equal mind the 
alternations of terror and of beauty ; who, not rejoicing less be- 
neath the sunny sky, can bear also to watch the bars of twilight 
narrowing on the horizon; and, not less sensible to the blessing of 
the peace of nature, can rejoice in the magnificence of the or- 
dinances by which that peace is protected and secured. — Ch. VI. 

THE MEANING OP HELL-FIRE. 

LXVI. In representing the Hades fire, it is not the mere form 
of the flame which needs most to be told, but its unquenchableness, 
its Divine ordainment and limitation, and its inner fierceness, not 
physical and material, but in being the expression of the wrath of 
God. And these things are not to be told by imitating the fire that 
flashes out of a bundle of sticks. If we think over his symbol a lit- 
tle, we shall perhaps find that the Romanesque builder told mora 
truth in that likeness of a blood-red stream, flowing between defi- 
nite shores and out of God's throne, and expanding, as if fed by 
a perpetual current, into the lake wherein the wicked are cast, than 
the Gothic builder in those torch-flickerings about his niches. — 
Ch. VI. 

god's provisions in NATURE ADAPTED TO ALL. 

LXXI. That sentence of Genesis, "I have given thee every green 
herb for meat," like all the rest of the book, has a profound symbol- 
ical as well as a literal meaning. It is not merely the nourishment 
of the body, but the food of the soul, that is intended. The green 
herb is, of all nature, that which is most essential to the healthy 
spiritual life of man. Most of us do not need fine scenery; the 
precipice and the mountain peak are not intended to be seen by 
all men, — perhaps their power is greatest over those who are unac- 
customed to them. But trees, and fields, and flowers were made for 
all, and are necessary for all. God has connected the labor which 
is essential to the bodily sustenance, with the pleasures which are 
healthiest for the heart; and while He made the ground stub- 
born, He made its herbage fragrant, and its blossoms fair. The 
proudest architecture that mnn rnn build has no higher honor than 



RELIGIOUS LIGHT IN ARCHITECTURE 247 

to bear the image and recall the memory of that grass of the field 
which is, at once, the type and the support of his existence; the 
goodly building is then most glorious when it is sculptured into 
the likeness of the leaves of Paradise; and the great Gothic spirit, 
as we showed it to be noble in its disquietude, is also noble in its 
hold of nature; it is, indeed, like the dove of Noah, in that she 
found no rest upon the face of the waters, — but like her in this 

also, "LO, IN HER MOUTH WAS AN OLIVE BRANCH, PLUCKED OFF." 

Ch. VI. 

SIN CONSISTS IN CHOICE OF EVIL. 

LXXXIII. And here, in passing, let us notice a principle as 
true in architecture as in morals. It is not the compelled, but 
the wilful, transgression of law which corrupts the character. Sin 
is not in the act, but in the choice. It is a law for Gothic archi- 
tecture, that it shall use the pointed arch for its roof proper; but 
because, in many cases of domestic building, this becomes impos- 
sible for want of room (the whole height of the apartment being 
required everywhere), or in various other ways inconvenient, flat 
ceilings may be used, and yet the Gothic shall not lose its purity. 
But in the roof-mask, there can be no necessity nor reason for a 
change of form: the gable is the best; and if any other — dome, or 
bulging crown, or whatsoever else — be employed at all, it must 
be in pure caprice, and wilful transgression of law. And wher- 
ever, therefore, this is done, the Gothic has lost its character; it 
is pure Gothic no more. — Ch. VI. 

CHRIST WAS ALL IN ALL TO THE EARLY CHRISTIANS. 

XLV. In the early ages of Christianity, there was little care 
taken to analyze character. One momentous question was heard 
over the whole world, — Dost thou believe in the Lord with all thine 
heart? There was but one division among men, — the great un- 
atoneable division between the disciple and adversary. The love 
of Christ was all, and in all; and in proportion to the nearness of 
their memory of His person and teaching, men understood the in- 
finity of the requirements of the moral law, and the manner in 
which it alone could be fulfilled. The early Christians felt that 
virtue, like sin, was a subtle universal thing, entering into every 
act and thought, appearing outwardly in ten thousand diverse ways, 
diverse according to the separate framework of every heart in 
which it dwelt; but one and the same always in its proceeding 
from the love of God, as sin is one and the same in proceeding 
from hatred of God. And in their pure, early, and practical 
piety, they saw there was no need for codes of morality, or sys- 
tems of metaphysics. Their virtue comprehended everything, en- 
tered into everything; it was too vast and too spiritual to be de- 
fined; but there was no need of its definition. For through faith, 



248 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

working by love, they knew that all human excellence would be 
developed in due order; but that, without faith, neither reason 
could define, nor effort reach, the lowest phase of Christian virtue. 

THE APOSTLES ON VIRTUE AND SIN. 

Therefore, when any of the Apostles have occasion to describe 
or enumerate any forms of vice or virtue by name, there is no at- 
tempt at system in their words. They use them hurriedly and 
energetically, heaping the thoughts one upon another in order as 
far as possible to fill the reader's mind with a sense of the infinity 
both of crime and of righteousness. Hear St. Paul describe sin: 
"Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, 
covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, 
malignity; whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, 
boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without 
understanding, covenant breakers, without natural affection, im- 
placable, unmerciful." There is evidently here an intense feeling 
of the universality of sin; and in order to express it, the Apostle 
hurries his words confusedly together, little caring about their 
order, as knowing all the vices to be indissolubly connected one 
with another. It would be utterly vain to endeavor to arrange his 
expressions as if they had been intended for the ground of any sys- 
tem, or to give any philosophical definition of the vices. So also hear 
him speaking of virtue: ''Rejoice in the Lord. Let your modera- 
tion be known unto all men. Be careful for nothing, but in every- 
thing let your requests be made known unto God; and whatsoever 
things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are 
pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good 
report, if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on 
these things." Observe, he gives up all attempt at definition; he 
leaves the definition to every man's heart, though he writes so as to 
mark the overflowing fulness of his own vision of virtue. And so 
it is in all writings of the Apostles; their manner of exhortation, 
and the kind of conduct they press, vary according to the persons 
they address, and the feeling of the moment at which they write, 
and never show any attempt at logical precision. And, although 
the words of their Master are not thus irregularly uttered, but are 
weighed like fine gold, yet, even in His teaching, there is no detailed 
or organized system of morality ; but the command only of that 
faith and love which were to embrace the whole being of man : "On 
these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." Here 
and there an incidental warning against this or that more danger- 
ous form of vice or error, "Take heed and beware of covetousness," 
"Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees;" here and there a plain ex- 
ample of the meaning of Christian love, as in the parables of the 
Samaritan and the Prodigal, and His own perpetual example : these 
were the elements of Christ's constant teaching; for the Beatitudes, 



RELIGIOUS LIGHT IN ARCHITECTURE 249 

which are the only approximation to anything like a systematic 
statement, belong to different conditions and characters of individ- 
ual men, not to abstract virtues. And all early Christians taught 
in the same manner. They never cared to expound the nature of 
this or that virtue ; for they knew that the believer who had Christ, 
had all. Did he need fortitude? Christ was his rock: Equity? 
Christ was his righteousness: Holiness? Christ was his sanctifica- 
tion: Liberty? Christ was his redemption: Temperance? Christ 
was his ruler: Wisdom? Christ was his light: Truthfulness? 
Christ was the truth : Charity : Christ was love. — Ch. VIII . 

HOW CHRISTIANITY WAS CORRUPTED. 

XL VI. Now, exactly in proportion as the Christian religion be- 
came less vital, and as the various corruptions which time and Satan 
brought into it were able to manifest themselves, the person and 
offices of Christ were less dwelt upon, and the virtues of Christians 
more. The Life of the Believer became in some degree separated 
from the Life of Christ; and his virtue, instead of being a stream 
flowing forth from the throne of God, and descending upon the 
earth, began to be regarded by him as a pyramid upon earth, which 
he had to build up, step by step, that from the top of it he might 
reach the Heavens. It was not possible to measure the waves of the 
w^ater of life, but it was perfectly possible to measure the bricks of 
the Tower of Babel; and gradually, as the thoughts of men were 
w^ithdrawn from their Redeemer, and fixed upon themselves, the 
virtues began to be squared, and counted, and classified, and put 
into separate heaps of firsts and seconds ; some things being virtuous 
cardinally, and other things virtuous only north-north-west. It is 
very curious to put in close juxtaposition the words of the Apostles 
and of some of the writers of the fifteenth century touching sancti- 
flcation. For instance, hear first St. Paul to the Thessalonians : 
*'The very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your 
whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the 
coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful is he that calleth you, 
w^ho also will do it." And then the following part of a prayer which 
I translate from a MS. of the fifteenth century : "May He (the Holy 
Spirit) govern the five Senses of my body ; may He cause me to em- 
brace the Seven Works of Mercy, and firmly to believe and observe 
the Twelve Articles of the Faith and the Ten Commandments of 
the Law, and defend me from the Seven Mortal Sins, even to the 
end."— Ch. VIII. 

THE STONES OF VENICE. VOL. III. 

GOD REVEALED IN NATURE. 

XL VII. As the other visible elements of the universe — its air, its 
"water, and its flame — set forth, in their pure energies, the life-giv- 



2 so THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

ing, purifying, and sanctifying influences of the Deity upon His 
creatures, so the earth, in its purity, sets forth His eternity and His 
Truth. . . . 

As we would not wantonly pollute the fresh wuters when 
they issue forth in their clear glory from the rock, nor stay the moun- 
tain winds into pestilential stagnancy, nor mock the sunbeams with 
artificial and ineffective light; so let us not by our own base and 
barren falsehoods, replace the crystalline strength and burning color 
of the earth from which we were born, and to which we must re- 
turn ; the earth which, like our own bodies, though dust in its deg- 
radation, is full of splendor when God's hand gathers its atoms; and 
which was for ever sanctified by Him, as the symbol no less of His 
love than of His truth, when He bade the high priest bear the names 
of the Children of Israel on the clear stones of the Breastplate of 
Judgment. — Ch. I. 

FIRST PLACE TO RELIGION. 

CI. Religion is, of all subjects, that which will least endure a 
second place in the heart or thoughts, and a languid and occasional 
study of it was sure to lead to error or infidelity. On the other 
hand, what was heartily admired and unceasingly contemplated was 
soon brought nigh to being believed; and the systems of Pagan 
mythology began gradually to assume the places in the human mind 
from which the unwatched Christianity was wasting. Men did not 
indeed openly sacrifice to Jupiter, or build silver shrines for Diana, 
but the ideas of Paganism nevertheless became thoroughly vital and 
present with them at all times; and it did not matter in the least, 
as far as respected the power of true religion, whether the Pagan 
image was believed in or not, so long as it entirely occupied the 
thoughts. The scholar of the sixteenth century, if he saw the light- 
nmg shining from the east unto the west, thought forthwith of 
Jupiter, not of the coming of the Son of Man ; if he saw the moon 
walking in brightness, he thought of Diana, not of the throne which 
was to be established for ever as a faithful witness in heaven; and 
though his heart was but secretly enticed, yet thus he. denied the 
God that is above. 

And, indeed, this double creed, of Christianity confessed and 
Paganism beloved, was worse than Paganism itself, inasmuch as it 
refused effective and practical belief altogether. It would have been 
better to have worshipped Diana and Jupiter at once, than to have 
gone on through the whole of life naming one God, imagining an- 
other, and dreading none. Better, a thousandfold, to have been "a 
Pagan suckled in some creed outworn," than to have stood by the 
great sea of Eternity and seen no God walking on its waves, no 
heavenly world on its horizon. — Ch. 11. 



RELIGIOUS LIGHT IN ARCHITECTURE 251 

ART GREATER THAN SCIENCE. 

VIII. Science deals exclusively with things as they are in them- 
selves; and art exclusively with things as they afiFect the human 
senses and human soul. Her work is to portray the appearance of 
things, and to deepen the natural impressions which they produce 
upon living creatures. The work of science is to substitute facts 
for appearances, and demonstrations for impressions. Both, observe, 
are equally concerned with truth; the one with truth of aspect, the 
other with truth of essence. Art does not represent things falsely 
but truly as they appear to mankind. Science studies the relations 
of things to each other : but art studies only their relations to man ; 
and it requires of everything which is submitted to it imperatively 
this, and only this, — what that thing is to the human eyes and 
human heart, what it has to say to men, and what it can become 
to them : a field of question just as much vaster than that of science, 
as the soul is larger than the material creation. — Ch. II. 

THE sun's GREATNESS AND DISTANCE. 

IX. Take a single instance. Science informs us that the sun is 
ninety-five millions of miles distant from, and 111 times broader 
than, the earth; that we and all the planets revolve round it; and 
that it revolves on its own axis in 25 days, 14 hours and 4 minutes. 
With all this, art has nothing whatsoever to do. It has no care to 
know anything of this kind. But the things which it does care to 
know, are these: that in the heavens God hath set a tabernacle for 
the sun, "which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and 
rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race. His going forth is from the 
end of the heaven, and his circuit unto the ends of it, and there 
is nothing hid from the heat thereof." — Ch. II. 

THE SCOPE OF TRUTH IN ART. 

X. This, then, being the kind of truth with which art is ex- 
clusively concerned, how is such truth as this to be ascertained and 
accumulated? Evidently, and only, by perception and feeling. 
Never either by reasoning, or report. Nothing must come between 
Nature and the artist's sight; nothing between God and the artist's 
soul. Neither calculation nor hearsay, — be it the most subtle of 
calculations, or the wisest of sayings, — may be allowed to come be- 
tween the universe, and the witness which art bears to its visible 
nature. The whole value of that witness depends on its being eye- 
witness; the whole genuineness, acceptableness, and dominion of it 
depend on the personal assurance of the man who utters it. All its 
victory depends on the veracity of the one preceding word, "Vidi." 



252 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

THE FUNCTION OF THE ARTIST. 

The whole function of the artist in the world is to be a seeing 
and feeling creature; to be an instrument of such tenderness and 
sensitiveness, that no shadow, no hue, no line, no instantaneous 
and evanescent expression of the visible things around him, nor 
any of the emotions which they are capable of conveying to the spirit 
which has been given him, shall either be left unrecorded, or fade 
from the book of record. It is not his business either to think, to judge, 
to argue, or to know. His place is neither in the closet, nor on the 
bench, nor at the bar, nor in the library. They are for other men 
and other work. He may think, in a by-way; reason, now and 
then, when he has nothing better to do; know, such fragments of 
knowledge as he can gather without stooping, or reach without 
pains ; but none of these things are to be his care. The work of his 
life is to be two-fold only: to see, to feel. — Ch. II. 

EVERY MAN FOR HIS WORK. 

XI. God has made every man fit for his work; He has given to 
the man whom he means for a student, the reflective, logical, se- 
quential faculties; and to the man whom He means for an artist, 
the perceptive, sensitive, retentive faculties. And neither of these 
men, so far from being able to do the other's work, can even com- 
prehend the way in which it is done. The student has no under- 
standing of the vision, nor the painter of the process; but chiefly the 
student has no idea of the colossal grasp of the true painter's vis- 
ion and sensibility. — Ch. II. 

WHAT GOD GIVES. 

XII. The thoughtful man is gone far away to seek; but the 
perceiving man must sit still, and open his heart to receive. The 
thoughtful man is knitting and sharpening himself into a two- 
edged sword, wherewith to pierce. The perceiving man is stretching 
himself into a four-cornered sheet wherewith to catch. And all the 
breadth to which he can expand himself, and all the white empti- 
ness into which he can blanch himself, will not be enough to receive 
what God has to give him. — Ch. II. 

KNOWLEDGE AND CONTENTMENT. 

XXIV. We talk of learned and ignorant men, as if there were 
a certain quantity of knowledge, which to possess was to be learned, 
and which not to possess was to be ignorant ; instead of considering 
that knowledge is infinite, and that the man most learned in human 
estimation is just as far from knowing anything as he ought to know 
it, as the unlettered peasant. Men are merely on a lower or higher stage 
of^an eminence, whose summit is God's throne, infinitely above all; 



RELIGIOUS LIGHT IN ARCHITECTURE 253 

land there is just as much reason for the wisest as for the simplest 
man being discontented with his position, as respects the real quan- 
tity of knowledge he possesses. And, for both of them, the only true 
reasons for contentment with the sum of knowledge they possess are 
these : that it is the kind of knowledge they need for their duty and 
happiness in life; that all they have is tested and certain, so far as 
it is in their power; that all they have is well in order, and within 
reach when they need it; that it has not cost too much time in the 
(getting; that none of it, once got, has been lost; and that there is 
not too much to be easily taken care of. — Ch. II. 

ASSIMILATING KNOWLEDGE. 

XXVI. With respect to knowledge, we are to reason and act ex- 
actly as with respect to food. We no more live to know, than we 
live to eat. We live to contemplate, enjoy, act, adore; and we may 
know all that is to be known in this world, and what Satan knows in 
the other, without being able to do any of these. We are to ask, 
therefore, first, is the knowledge we would have fit food for us, good 
and simple, not artificial and decorated? and secondly, how much 
of it will enable us best for our work ; and will leave our hearts light, 
and our eyes clear? For no more than that is to be eaten without 
the old Eve-sin. — Ch. II. 

LESSON FROM THE BOOK OF JOB. 

XXXI. The true and great sciences, more especially natural his- 
tory, make men gentle and modest in proportion to the largeness of 
their apprehension, and just perception of the infiniteness of the 
things they can never know. And this, it seems to me, is the prin- 
cipal lesson we are intended to be taught by the book of Job; for 
there God has thrown open to us the heart of a man most just and 
holy, and apparently perfect in all things possible to human nature 
except humility. For this he is tried: and we are shown that no 
suffering, no self-examination, however honest, however stern, no 
searching out of the heart by its own bitterness, is enough to con- 
vince man of his nothingness before God : but that the sight of God's 
creation will do it. For, when the Deity himself has willed to end 
the temptation, and to accomplish in Job that for which it was 
sent, He does not vouchsafe to reason with him, still less does He 
overwhelm him with terror, or confound him by laying open before 
his eyes the book of his iniquities. He opens before him only the 
arch of the dayspring, and the fountains of the deep; and amidst 
the covert of the reeds, and on the heaving waves. He bids him 
w^atch the kings of the children of pride, — "Behold now Behemoth, 
which I made with thee:" And the work is done. — Ch. II. 



254 TEE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

PRIDE OF LIFE AND FEAR OF DEATH. 

XLVI. Exactly in proportion as the pride of life became more 
insolent, the fear of death became more servile ; and the difference 
in the manner in which the men of early and later days adorned 
the sepulchre, confesses a still greater difference in their manner 
of regarding death. To those he came as the comforter and the 
friend, rest in his right hand, hope in his left ; to these as the humili- 
ator, the spoiler, and the avenger. And, therefore, we find the early* 
tombs at once simple and lovely in adornment, severe and solemn 
in their expression ; confessing the power, and accepting the peace, 
of death, openly and joyfully; and in all their symbols marking 
that the hope of resurrection lay only in Christ's righteousness; 
signed always with this simple utterance of the dead, ''I will lay me 
down in peace, and take my rest; for it 15 thou, Lord, only that 
makest me dwell in safety." — Ch. II. 

THE NECESSITY AND FUNCTION OP LAW. 

LXXXVII. Law, so far as it can be reduced to form and system, 
and is not written upon the heart, — as it is, in a Divine loyalty, upon 
the hearts of the great hierarchies who serve and wait about the 
throne of the Eternal Lawgiver, — this lower and formally expressi- 
ble law has, I say, two objects. It is either for the definition and 
restraint of sin, or the guidance of simplicity; it either explains, for- 
bids, and punishes wickedness, or it guides the movements and 
actions both of lifeless things and of the more simple and untaught 
among responsible agents. And so long, therefore, as sin and fool- 
ishness are in the world, so long it will be necessary for men to sub- 
mit themselves painfully to this lower law, in proportion to their 
need of being corrected, and to the degree of childishness or sim- 
plicity by which they approach more nearly to the condition of 
the unthinking and inanimate things which are governed by law 
altogether; yet yielding, in the manner of their submission to it, a 
singular lesson to the pride of man, — being obedient more perfectly 
in proportion to their greatness. But, so far as men become good 
and wise, and rise above the state of children, so far they become 
emancipated from this written law, and invested with the perfect 
freedom which consists in the fulness and joyfulness of compliance 
with a higher and unwritten law; a law so universal, so subtle, so 
glorious, that nothing but the heart can keep it. — Gh. II. 

PRIDE AND PHARISEEISM. 

LXXXVIII. Now pride opposes itself to the observance of this 
Divine law in two opposite ways : either by brute resistance, which is 
the way of the rabble and its leaders, denying or defying law alto- 
gether; or by formal compliance, which is the way of the Pharisee, 
exalting himself while he pretends to obedience, and making void 



RELIGIOUS LIGHT IN ARCHITECTURE 255 

the infinite and spiritual commandment by the finite and lettered 
commandment. And it is easy to know which law we are obey- 
ing: for any law which we magnify and keep through pride, is al- 
ways the law of ithe letter ; but that which we love and keep through 
humility, is the law of the Spirit: and the letter killeth, but tlie 
Spirit giveth life. — Ch. II. 

HOW Christ's teaching was perverted, — infidelity. 

XCIII. Year after year, as ihe history of the life of Christ sank 
back into the depths of time, and became obscured by the misty at- 
mosphere of the history of the world, — as intermediate actions and 
incidents multiplied in number, and countless changes in men's 
modes of life, and atones of thought, rendered it more difficult for 
them to imagine the facts of distant time, — it became daily, almost 
hourly, a greater effort for the faithful heart to apprehend the entire 
veracity and vitality of the story of its Redeemer; and more easy 
for the thoughiless and remiss to deceive themselves as to the true 
character of the belief they had been taught to profess. And this 
must have been the case, had ithe pastors of the Church never failed 
in their watchfulness, and the Church itself never erred in its prac- 
tice or doctrine. But when every year that removed the truths of 
the Gospel into deeper distance, added to them also some false or 
foolish tradition; when wilful distortion was added to natural ob- 
scurity, and the dimness of memory was disguised by the fruitfulness 
of fiction; when, moreover, the enormous temporal power granted 
to the clergy attracted into their ranks muHitudes of men who, but 
for such temptation, would not have pretended to the Christian 
name, so that grievous wolves entered in among them, not sparing 
the flock; and when, by the machinations of such men, and the 
remissness of others, the form and administration of church doc- 
trine and discipline had become little more than a means of aggran- 
dizing the power of the priesthood, it was impossible any longer for 
men of thoughtfulness and piety to remain in an unquestioned se- 
renity of faith. — Ch. II. 

the reformation. PROTESTANT AND ROMANIST ERRORS. 

XCIV. The Protestant movement was, in reality, not Teformation 
but Teanimation. It poured new life into the Church, but it did not 
form or define her anew. In some sort it rather broke down her 
hedges, so that all they who passed by might pluck off her grapes. 
The reformers speedily found that the enemy was never far behind 
the sower of good seed; that an evil spirit, might enter the ranks 
of reformation as well as those of resistance; and that though the 
deadly blight might be checked amidst the wheat, there was no hope 
of ever ridding the wheat itself from the tares. New temptations 
were invented by Satan wherewith to oppose the revived strength of 



256 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

Christianity : as the Romanist, confiding in his human teachers, had 
ceased to try whether they were teachers sent from God, so the 
Protestant, confiding in the teaching of the Spirit, believed every 
spirit, and did not try the spirits whether they were of God. And 
a thousand enthusiasms and heresies speedily obscured the faith and 
divided the forces of the Reformation. — Ch. II. 

FORGETTING GOD AND PUNISHMENT. 

XVIII. Throughout the whole of Scripture history, nothing is 
more remarkable than the close connection of punishment with the 
sin of vain-glory. Every other sin is occasionally permitted to re- 
main, for lengthened periods, without definite chastisement; but 
the forgetfulness of God, and the claim of honor by man, as be- 
longing to himself, are visited at once, whether in Hezekiah, Nebu- 
chadnezzar, or Herod, with the most tremendous punishment. — 
Ch. III. 

THE PROPER FUNCTION OF PLAY. 

XXIV. It is a much more serious question than may be at first 
supposed; for a healthy manner of play is necessary in order to a 
healthy i.^anner of work : and because the choice of our recreation is, 
in most cases, left to ourselves, while the nature of our work is gen- 
erally fixed by necessity or authority, it may be well doubted 
whether more distressful consequences may not have resulted from 
mistaken choice in play than from mistaken direction in labor. — 
Ch. III. 

EXERCISE IN PLAY. 

XXV. We are only concerned, here, with that kind of play which 
causes laughter or implies recreation, not with that which consists 
in the excitement of the energies whether of body or mind. Mus- 
cular exertion is, indeed, in youth, one of the conditions of recrea- 
tion; "but neither the violent bodily labor which children of all 
ages agree to call play," nor the grave excitement of the mental 
faculties in games of skill or chance, are in anywise connected with 
the state of feeling we have here to investigate, namely, that sport- 
iveness which man possesses in common with many inferior creat- 
ures, but to which his higher faculties give nobler expression in the 
various manifestations of wit, humor, and fancy. 

With respect to the manner in which this instinct of playfulness 
is indulged or repressed, mankind are broadly distinguishable into 
four classes: the men who play wisely; who play necessarily; who 
play inordinately; and who play not at all. — Ch. III. 

WISDOM IN PLAY 

XXVI. First: Those who play wisely. It is evident that the 
idea of any kind of play can only be associated with the idea of an 



RELIGIOUS LIGHT IN ARCHITECTURE 257 

imperfect, childish, and fatigable nature. As far as men can raise 
that nature, so that it shall no longer be interested by trifles or ex- 
hausted by toils, they raise it above play ; he whose heart is at once 
fixed upon heaven, and open to the earth, so as to apprehend the 
importance of heavenly doctrines, and the compass of human sor- 
row, will have little disposition for jest; and exactly in proportion 
to the breadth and depth of his character and intellect, will be, 
in general, the incapability of surprise, or exhuberant and sud- 
den emotion, which must render play impossible. It is, however, 
evidently not intended that many men should even reach, far less 
pass their lives in, that solemn state of thoughtfulness, which brings 
them into the nearest brotherhood with their Divine Master ; and the 
highest and healthiest state which is competent to ordinary human- 
ity appears to be that which, accepting the necessity of recreation, 
and yielding to the impulses of natural delight springing out of 
health and innocence, does, indeed, condescend often to playfulness, 
but never without such deep love of God, of truth, and of humanity, 
as shall make even its slightest words reverent, its idlest fancies profit- 
able, and its keenest satire indulgent. Wordsworth and Plato furnish 
us with, perhaps, the finest and highest examples of this playfulness : 
in the one case, unmixed with satire, the perfectly simple effusion 
of that spirit 

"Which gives to all the self-same bent, 
Whose life is wise, and innocent." 

—Ch. III. 

NECESSARY PLAY. 

XXVII. Secondly: The men who play necessarily. That high- 
est species of playfulness, which we have just been considering, is 
evidently the condition of a mind, not only highly cultivated, but 
so habitually trained to intellectual labor that it can bring a con- 
siderable force of accurate thought into its moments even of recrea- 
tion. This is not possible, unless so much repose of mind and heart 
are enjoyed, even at the periods of greatest exertion, that the rest 
required by the system is diffused over the whole life. To the major- 
ity of mankind, such a state is evidently unattainable 

This stretching of the mental limbs as their fetters fall away, — 
this leaping and dancing of the heart and intellect, when they are 
restored to the fresh air of heaven, yet half paralyzed by their cap- 
tivity, and unable to turn themselves to any earnest purpose, — I call 
necessary play. It is impossible to exaggerate its importance, whether 
in polity, or in art. — Ch. III. 

INORDINATE PLAY. 

XXVIII. Thirdly: The men who play inordinately. The most 
perfect state of society which, consistently with due understand- 
ing of man's nature, it may be permitted us to conceive, would be 



w 



258 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

one in which the whole human race were divided, more or less dis- 
tinctly, into workers and thinkers; that is to say, into the two 
classes, who only play wisely, or play necessarily. But the number 
and the toil of the working class are enormously increased, prob- 
ably more than doubled, by the vices of the men who neither play 
wisely nor necessarily, but are enabled by circumstances, and per- 
mitted by their want 5f principle, to make amusement the object of 
their existence. There is not any moment of the lives of such men 
which is not injurious to others; both because they leave the work 
undone which was appointed for them, and because they necessa- 
rily think wrongly, whenever it becomes compulsory upon them to 
think at all. The greater portion of the misery of this world arises 
from the false opinions of men whose idleness has physically in- 
capacitated them from forming true ones. Every duty which we 
omit obscures some truth which we should have known; and the 
guilt of a life spent in the pursuit of pleasure is twofold, partly con- 
sisting in the perversion of action, and partly in the dissemination 
of falsehood.— C/t. ///. 



THE SATIRICAL AND LACK OF REVERENCE. 

XXIX. There is, however, a less criminal, though hardly less 
dangerous condition of mind ; which, though not failing in its more 
urgent duties, fails in the finer conscientiousness which regulates the 
degree, and directs the choice, of amusement, at those times when 
amusement is allowable. The most frequent error in this respect 
is the want of reverence in approaching subjects of importance or 
sacredness, and of caution in the expression of thoughts which may 
encourage like irreverence in others : and these faults are apt to gain 
upon the mind until it becomes habitually more sensible to what is 
ludicrous and accidental, than to what is grave and essential, in any 
subject that is brought before it; or even, at last, desires to perceive 
or to know nothing but what may end in jest. — Ch. III. 

THE TERROR OF A STORM. 

XLI. Two great and principal passions are evidently appointed 
by the Deity to rule the life of man ; namely, the love of God, and 
the fear of sin, and of its companion — Death. How many motives 
we have for Love, how much there is in the universe to kindle our 
admiration and to claim our gratitude, there are, happily, multi- 
tudes among us who both feel and teach. But it has not, I think, 
been sufficiently considered how evident, throughout the system of 
creation, is the purpose of God that we should often be affected by 
Fear; not the sudden, selfish, and contemptible fear of immediate 
danger, but the fear which arises out of the contemplation of great 
powers in destructive operation, and generally from the perception 
of the presence of death. . . . Consider, for instance, the moral 



RELIGIOUS LIGHT IN ARCHITECTURE 259 

effect of a single thunderstorm. Perhaps two or three persons may- 
be struck dead within the space of a hundred square miles; and 
their deaths, unaccompanied by the scenery of the storm, would pro- 
duce little more than a momentary sadness in the busy hearts of 
living men. But the preparation for the Judgment by all that 
mighty gathering of clouds ; by the questioning of the forest leaves, 
in their terrified stillness, which way the winds shall go forth ; by the 
murmuring to each other, deep in the distance, of the destroying 
angels before they draw forth their swords of fire; by the march 
of the funeral darkness in the midst of the noon-day, and the 
rattling of the dome of heaven beneath the chariot-wheels of death ; 
— on how many minds do not these produce an impression almost as 
great as the actual witnessing of the fatal issue! and how strangely 
are the expressions of the threatening elements fitted to the appre- 
hension of the human soul 1 — Ch. III. 

GOOD AND EVIL HEAVEN AND HELL. 

XLII. I understand not the most dangerous, because most at- 
tractive form of modern infidelity, which, pretending to exalt the 
beneficence of the Deity, degrades it into a reckless infinitude of 
mercy, and blind obliteration of the work of sin; and which does 
this chiefly by dwelling on the manifold appearances of God's kind- 
ness on the face of creation. Such kindness is indeed everywhere 
and always visible; but not alone. Wrath and threatening are in- 
variably mingled with the love ; and in the utmost solitudes of nature, 
the existence of Hell seems to me as legibly declared by a thousand 
spiritual utterances, as that of Heaven. It is well for us to dwell 
with thankfulness on the unfolding of the flower, and the falling 
of the dew, and the sleep of the green fields in the sunshine ; but the 
blasted trunk, the barren rock, the moaning of the bleak winds, the 
roar of the black, perilous, merciless whirlpools of the mountain 
streams, the solemn solitudes of moors and seas, the continual fad- 
ing of all beauty into darkness, and of all strength into dust, have 
these no language for us? . 

The good succeeds to the evil as day succeeds the night, but so 
also the evil to the good. Gerizim and Ebal, birth and death, light 
and darkness, heaven and hell, divide the existence of man and his 
futurity.'— C/i. III. 

EVIL CAN ONLY PRODUCE EVIL. 

LV. The base workman cannot conceive anything but what is 
base ; and there will be no loveliness in any part of his work, or, at the 
best, a loveliness measured by line and rule, and dependent on legal 

* The Love of God is, however, always shown by the predominance, or greater 
sum, of good, in the end ; but never by the annihilation of evil. The modern 
doubts of eternal punishment are not so much the consequence of benevolence 
as of feeble ijowers of reasoning. Every one admits that God brings finite good 
out of finite evil. Why not, therefore, infinite good out of infinite evil? 



26o THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

shapes of feature. But, without resorting to this test, and merely 
by examining the ugly grotesque itself, it will be found that, if it 
belongs to the base school, there will be, first, no Horror in it; sec- 
ondly, no Nature in it; and, thirdly, no Mercy in it. 

LVI. The base soul has no fear of sin, and no hatred of it : and, 
however it may strive to make its work terrible, there will be no 
genuineness in the fear; the utmost it can do will be to make its 
work disgusting. — Ch. III. 

COOPERATION WITH THE DIVINE. 

II. Not long ago, it was said to me by one of the masters of 
modern science : "When men invented the locomotive, the child was 
learning to go; when they invented the telegraph, it was learning 
to speak." He looked forward to the manhood of mankind, as as- 
suredly the nobler in proportion to the slowness of its development. 
What might not be expected from the prime and middle strength 
of the order of existence whose infancy had lasted six thousand 
years? And, indeed, I think this the truest, as well as the most 
cheering, view that we can take of the world's history. Little prog- 
ress has been made as yet. Base war, lying policy, thoughtless 
cruelty, senseless improvidence, — all things which in nations, are 
analogous to the petulance, cunning, impatience and carelessness of 
infancy, have been, up to this hour, as characteristic of mankind 
as they were in the earliest periods ; so that we must either be driven 
to doubt of human progress at all, or look upon it as in its very 
earliest stage. — Ch. IV. 

BODY AND SOUL RISE OR FALL TOGETHER. 

VII. I do not mean to speak of the body and soul as separable. 
The man is made up of both : they are to be raised and glorified to- 
gether, and all art is an expression of the one, by and through the 
other. All that I would insist upon is, the necessity of the whole 
man being in his work ; the body must be in it. Hands and habits 
must be in it, whether we will or not; but the nobler part of the 
man may often not be in it. And that nobler part acts principally 
in love, reverence, and admiration, together with those conditions 
of thought which arise out of them. For we usually fall into much 
error by considering the intellectual powers as having dignity in 
themselves, and separable from the heart ; whereas the truth is, that 
the intellect becomes noble and ignoble according to the food we 
give it, and the kind of subjects with which it is conversant. It is 
not the reasoning power which, of itself, is noble, but the reasoning 
power occupied with its proper objects. Half of the mistakes of 
metaphysicians have arisen from their not observing this; namely, 
that the intellect, going through the same processes, is yet mean or 
noble according to the matter it deals with, and wastes itself away 
in mere rotatory motion, if it be set to grind straws and dust. — 
Ch. IV. 



IV 

LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE AND PAINTING. 
One Vol. (1854.) 

The four lectures which constitute this volume of 126 pages were 
delivered in Edinburgh in the year 1853 and published in the year 
following, "as far as possible just as they were delivered." The lec- 
tures as a whole, are a splendid example of that rare gift of Ruskin's, 
which made the driest and most technical of subjects attractive, 
alike to the scholar and the unlearned. Many beautiful spiritual 
lessons are taught and Scripture references are frequent. 

The third lecture is devoted to a favorite subject of Ruskin's, "Tur- 
ner and His Works," closing with a very pathetic and eloquent ref- 
erence to that great artist's death. 

STRENGTH AND BEAUTY IN THE POINTED AECH. 

8. Not the most beautiful because it is the strongest; but most 
beautiful, because its form is one of those which, as we know by its 
frequent occurrence in the work of nature around us, has been ap- 
pointed by the Deity to be an everlasting source of pleasure to the 
human mind. 

Gather a branch from any of the trees or flowers to which the 
earth owes its principal beauty. You will find that every one of its 
leaves is terminated, more or less, in the form of the pointed arch ; 
and to that form owes its grace and character. . . . Nature 
abhors equality, and similitude, just as much as foolish men love 
them. You will find that the ends of the shoots of the ash are com- 
posed of four green stalks bearing leaves, springing in the form of 
a cross, if seen from above, and at first you will suppose the four 
arms of the cross are equal. But look more closely, and you will 
find that two opposite arms or stalks have only five leaves each, and 
the other two have seven, or else, two have seven, and the other two 
nine ; but always one pair of stalks has two leaves more than the other 
pair. Sometimes the tree gets a little puzzled, and forgets which is 
to be the longest stalk, and begins with a stem for seven leaves where 
it should have nine, and then re'collects itself at the last minute, and 
puts on another leaf in a great hurry, and so produces a stalk with 
eight leaves; but all this care it takes merely to keep itself out of 
equalities ; and all its grace and power of pleasing are owing to its 
doing so. — Led. I. 

261 



262 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

COLOR AS A SOURCE OP PLEASURE. 

10. You find that custom has indeed no real influence upon our 
feelings of the beautiful, except in dulling and checking them; 
that is to say, it will and does, as we advance in years, deaden in 
some degree our enjoyment of all beauty, but it in no wise in- 
fluences our determination of what is beautiful and what is not. You 
see the broad blue sky every day over your heads; but you do not 
for that reason determine blue to be less or more beautiful than you 
did at first; you are unaccustomed to see stones as blue as the sap- 
phire, but you do not for that reason think the sapphire less beauti- 
ful than other stones. The blue colour is everlastingly appointed 
by the Deity to be a source of delight ; and whether seen perpetually 
over your head, or crystallised once in a thousand years into a single 
and incomparable stone, your acknowledgment of its beauty is 
equally natural, simple, and instantaneous. — Led. 1. 

UGLINESS AND SIN : — TRUTH AND BEAUTY. 

11. I may state what I believe to be the truth, that beauty has been 
appointed by the Deity to be one of the elements by which the hu- 
man soul is continually sustained ; it is therefore to be found more 
or less in all natural objects, but in order that we may not satiate 
ourselves with it, and weary of it, it is rarely granted to us in its 
utmost degrees. When we see it in those utmost degrees, we are at- 
tracted to it strongly, and remember it long, as in the case of singu- 
larly beautiful scenery, or a beautiful countenance. On the other 
hand, absolute ugliness is admitted as rarely as perfect beauty; but 
degrees of it more or less distinct are associated with whatever has 
the nature of death and sin, just as beauty is associated with what 
has the nature of virtue and of life. — Led. I. 

THE TOWERS OF THE BIBLE. 

^ 19. Look through your Bibles only, and collect the various expres- 
sions with reference to tower-building there, and you will have a 
very complete idea of the spirit in which it is for the most part under- 
taken. You begin with that of Babel; then you remember Gideon 
beating down the Tower of Penuel, in order more completely to hum- 
ble the pride of the men of the city ; you remember the defence of the 
tower of Shechem against Abimelech, and the death of Abimelech 
by the casting of a stone from it by a woman's hand ; you recollect 
the husbandman building a tower in his vineyard, and the beau- 
tiful expressions in Solomon's Song — "The Tower of Lebanon, 
which looketh towards Damascus;" "I am a wall, and my breasts 
like towers;" — you recollect the Psalmist's expressions of love and 
delight, ''Go ye round about Jerusalem; tell the towers thereof: 
mark ye well her bulwarks; consider her palaces, that ye may tell 
it to the generation following." You see in all these cases how com- 



RELIGIOUS LIGHT IN ARCHITECTURE 263 

pletely the tower is a subject of human pride, or delight, or defence, 
not in anywise associated with religious sentiment; the towers of 
Jerusalem being named in the same sentence, not with her temple, 
but with her bulwarks and palaces. And thus, when the tower is 
in reality connected with a place of worship, it was generally done 
to add to its magnificence, but not to add to its religious expression. 
— Led. I. 

BUILD FOR YOUR COMFORT AND ALSO FOR THE WAYFARER. 

25. The next house you build, insist upon having the pure old 
Gothic porch, walled in on both sides, with its pointed arch entrance 
and gable roof above. Under that, you can put down your um- 
brella at your leisure, and, if you will, stop a moment to talk with 
your friend as you give him the parting shake of the hand. And if 
now and then a wayfarer found a moment's rest on a stone seat on 
each side of it, I believe you would find the insides of your houses 
not one whit the less comfortable ; and, if you answer me, that were 
such refuges built in the open streets, they would become mere 
nests of filthy vagrants, I reply that I do not despair of such a 
change in the administration of the poor laws of this country, as 
shall no longer leave any of our fellow-creatures in a state in which 
they would pollute the steps of our houses by resting upon them for 
a night. But if not, the command to all of us is strict and straight, 
"When thou seest the naked, tljat thou cover him, and that thou 
bring the poor that are cast out to thy house." Not to the workhouse, 
observe, but to thy house :^ and I say it would be better a thousand- 
fold, that our doors should be beset by the poor day by day, than 
that it should be written of any one of us, "They reap every one his 
corn in the field, and they gather the vintage of the wicked. They 
cause the naked to .lodge without shelter, that they have no cover- 
ing in the cold. They are wet with the showers of the mountains, 
and embrace the rock, for want of a shelter.'"" — Lect. I. 

EVERYTHING IN THE BIBLE. IRON ARCHITECTURE. 

28. I am speaking to a company of philosophers, but not phi- 
losophers of the kind who suppose that the Bible is a superannuated 
book ; neither are you of those who think the Bible is dishonoured 
by being referred to for judgment in small matters. The very di- 
vinity of the Book seems to me, on the contrary, to justify us in re- 
ferring every thing to it, with respect to which any conclusion can 
be gathered from its pages. Assuming then that the Bible is neither 
superannuated now, nor ever likely to be so, it will follow that the 
illustrations which the Bible employs are likely to be clear and in- 
telligible illustrations to the e^d of time. I do not mean that every 

1 Isai. Iviii. 7. * 

2 Job xxiv. 6 8. 



264 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

thing spoken of in the Bible histories must continue to endure for all 
time, but that the things which the Bible uses for illustration of 
eternal truths are likely to remain eternally intelligible illustrations. 
Now I find that iron architecture is indeed spoken of in the Bible. 
You know how it is said to Jeremiah, "Behold, I have made thee this 
day a defenced city, and an iron pillar, and brazen walls, against 
the whole land." — Led. I. 

ROMANCE. 

32. This feeling which you are accustomed to despise — this secret 
and poetical enthusiasm in all your hearts, which, ag practical men, 
you try to restrain — is indeed one of the holiest parts of your being. It 
is the instinctive delight in, and admiration for, sublimity, beauty, 
and virtue, unusually manifested. And so far from being a dan- 
gerous guide, it is the truest part of your being. It is even truer than 
your consciences. A man's conscience may be utterly perverted and 
led astray; but so long as the feelings of romance endure within 
us, they are unerring — they are as ture to what is right and lovely 
as the needle to the north; and all that you have to do is to add 
to the enthusiastic sentiment, the majestic judgment — to mingle 
prudence and foresight with imagination and admiration, and you 
have the perfect human soul. But the great evil of these days is 
that we try to destroy the romantic feeling, instead of bridling and 
directing it. Mark what Young says of the men of the world: 

"They, who think nought so strong of the romance, 
So rank knight-errant, as a real friend." 

And they are right. True friendship is romantic, to the men of 
the world — true affection is romantic — true religion is romantic; 
and if you were to ask me who of all powerful and popular writers 
in the cause of error had wrought most harm to their race, I should 
hesitate in reply whether to name Voltaire or Byron, or the last 
most ingenious and most venomous of the degraded philosophers of 
Germany, or rather Cervantes, for he cast scorn upon the holiest 
principles of humanity — he, of all men, most helped forward the 
terrible change in the soldiers of Europe, from the spirit of Bayard 
to the spirit of Bonaparte, helped to change loyalty into license, pro- 
tection into plunder, truth into treachery, chivalry into selfishness; 
and since his time, the purest impulses and the noblest purposes 
have perhaps been oftener stayed by the devil, under the name 
of Quixotism, than under any other base name or false allegation. 
—Lect. 11. 

DOING GOOD AND UTOPIANISM. 

83. Quixotism, or Utopianism: that is another of the devil's pet 
•words. I believe the quiet admission which we are all of us so ready 
to make, that, because things have long been wrong, it is impossible 
they should ever be right, is one of the most fatal sources of misery 



RELIGIOUS LIGHT IN ARCHITECTURE 265 

and crime from which this world suffers. Whenever you hear a 
man dissuading you from attempting to do well, on the ground 
that perfection is ''Utopian," beware of that man. Cast the word 
out of your dictionary altogether. There is no need for it. Things 
are either possible or impossible — you can easily determine which, 
in any given state of human science. If the thing is impossible, you 
need not trouble yourselves about it; if possible, try for it. It is 
very Utopian to hope for the entire doing away with drunkenness 
and misery out of the Canongate; but the Utopianism is not our 
business — ^^the work is. It is Utopian to hope to give every child in 
this kingdom the knowledge of God from its youth ; but the Utopian- 
ism is not our business — the work is. — Led. II. 

THE MORAL PRINCIPLE IN SPENDING MONEY. 

45. You know how often it is difficult to be wisely charitable, to do 
good without multiplying the sources of evil. You know that to 
give alms is nothing unless you give thought also; and that there- 
fore it is written, not "blessed is he that feedeth the poor," but, 
^'blessed is he that considereth the poor." And you know that a 
little thought and a little kindness are often worth more than a 
great deal of money. 

Now this charity of thought is not merely to be exercised towards 
the poor; it is to be exercised towards all men. ... It is impos- 
sible to spend the smallest sum of money, for any not absolutely 
necessary purpose, without a grave responsibility attaching to the 
manner of spending it. The object we ourselves covet may, indeed, 
be desirable and harmless, so far as we are concerned, but the pro- 
viding us with it may, perhaps, be a very prejudicial occupation 
to some one else. And then it becomes instantly a moral ques- 
tion, whether we are to indulge ourselves or not. Whatever we wish 
to buy, we ought first to consider not only if the thing be fit for us, 
but if the manufacture of it be a wholesome and happy 'one ; and if, 
on the whole, the sum we are going to spend will do as much good 
spent in this way as it would if spent in any other way. It may 
be said that we have not time to consider all this before we make a 
purchase. But no time could be spent in a more important duty; 
and God never imposes a duty without giving the time to do it. Let 
us, however, only acknowledge the principle; — once make up your 
mind to allow the consideration of the effect of your purchases to 
regulate the kind of your purchase, and you will soon easily find 
grounds enough to decide upon. The plea of ignorance will never 
take away our responsibilities. It is written, "If thou sayest, Be- 
hold we "knew it not ; doth not he that pondereth the heart con- 
sider it? and he that keepeth thy soul, doth not he know it?" — 
Led. II. 



266 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

THE INFLUENCE OF BUYING THINGS. 

46. Enormous sums are spent annually in what is called patronage 
of art, but in what is for the most part merely buying what strikes 
our fancies. True and judicious patronage there is indeed; many 
a work of art is bought by those who do not care for its possession, 
to assist the struggling artist, or relieve the unsuccessful one. But 
for the most part, I fear we are too much in the habit of buying 
simply what we like best, wholly irrespective of any good to be done, 
either to the artist or to the schools of the country. By the purchase 
of every print which hangs on your walls, of every cup out of which 
you drink, and every table off which you eat your bread, you are 
educating a mass of men in one way or another. You are either 
employing them healthily or un wholesomely ; you are making them 
lead happy or unhappy lives ; you are leading them to look at nature, 
and to love her — to think, to feel, to enjoy — or you are blinding them 
to nature and keeping them bound, like beasts of burden, in me- 
chanical and monotonous employments. We shall all be asked on© 
day, why we did not think more of this. — Led. II. 

MUTUAL GOOD IN CARE OF THE STREETS. 

49. It is a law of God and of nature, that your pleasures — as your 
virtues — shall be enhanced by mutual aid. As, by joining hand 
in hand, you can sustain each other best, so, hand in hand, you can 
delight each other best. And there is indeed a charm and sacred- 
ness in street architecture which must be wanting even to that of 
the temple : it is a little thing for men to unite in the forms of a 
religious service, but it is much for them to unite, like true breth- 
ren, in the arts and offices of their daily lives. — Led. II. 

CHOICE OF A PERMANENT HOME. 

50. It is a subject for serious thought, whether it might not be 
better for many of us, if, on attaining a certain position in life, we 
determined, with God's permission, to choose a home in which to 
live and die, — a home not to be increased by adding stone to stone 
and field to field, but which, being enough for all our wishes at that 
period, we should resolve to be satisfied with for ever. Consider this ; 
and also, whether we ought not to be more in the habit of seeking 
honour from our descendants than our ancestors; thinking it better 
to be nobly remembered than nobly born; and striving so to live, 
that our sons, and our sons' sons, for ages to come, might still lead 
their children reverently to the doors out of which we had been 
carried to the grave, saying, "Look: This was his house: This was 
his chamber." — Led. II. 



RELIGIOUS LIGHT IN ARCHITECTURE 267 

THE BIBLE DELIGHTS IN NATURAL IMAGERY. 

79. You find, that the language of the Bible is specifically dis- 
tinguished from all other early literature, by its delight in natural 
imagery; and that the dealings of God with his people are calcu- 
lated peculiarly to awaken this sensibility within them. Out of the 
monotonous valley ^of Egypt they are instantly taken into the midst 
of the mightiest mountain scenery in the peninsula of Arabia; and 
that scenery is associated in their minds with the immediate mani- 
festation and presence of the Divine Power; so that mountains for 
ever afterwards become invested with a peculiar sacredness in their 
minds; while their descendants being placed in what was then one 
of the loveliest districts upon the earth, full of glorious vegetation, 
bounded on one side by the sea, on the north by ''that goodly moun- 
tain" Lebanon, on the south and east by deserts, whose barrenness 
enhanced by their contrast the sense of the perfection of beauty in 
their own land, they became, by these means, and by the touch of 
God's own hand upon their hearts, sensible to the appeal of natural 
scenery in a way in which no other people were at the time ; and their 
literature is full of expressions, not only testifying a vivid sense of 
the power of nature over man, but showing that sympathy with 
natural things themselves, as if they had human souls, which is the 
especial characteristic of true love of the works of God. . . . "Yea, 
the fir trees rejoice at thee, and the cedars of Lebanon, saying. Since 
thou art gone down to the grave, no feller is come up against us." 
See what sympathy there is here, as if with the very hearts of the 
trees themselves. So also in the words of Christ, in his personifica- 
tion of the lilies: ''They toil not, neither do they spin." Consider 
such expressions as ''The sea saw that, and fled, Jordan was driven 
back. The mountains skipped like rams; and the little hills like 
lambs." Try to find anything in profane writing like this; and 
note farther that the whole book of Job appears to have been chiefly 
written and placed in the inspired volume in order to show the value 
of natural history, and its power on the human heart. I cannot 
pass by it without pointing out the evidences of the beauty of the 
country that Job inhabited. 

Observe, first, it was an arable country. "The oxen were plough- 
ing, and the asses feeding beside them." It was a pastoral coun- 
try: his substance, besides camels and asses, was 7,000 sheep. It 
was a mountain country, fed by streams descending from the high 
snows. "My brethren have dealt deceitfully as a brook, and as the 
stream of brooks they pass away; which are blackish by reason of 
the ice, and wherein the snow is hid: What time they wax warm 
they vanish: when it is hot they are consumed out of their place." 
Again: "If I wash myself with snow water, and make my hands 
never so clean." Again: "Drought and heat consume the snow 
waters." It was a rocky country, with forests and verdure rooted in 



268 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

the rocks. "His branch shooteth forth in his garden ; his roots are 
wrapped about the heap, and seeth the place of stones." Again: 
"Thou shalt be in league with the stones of the field." It was a 
place visited, like the valleys of Switzerland, by convulsions and 
falls of mountains. "Surely the mountain falling cometh to nought, 
and the rock is removed out of his place." "The waters wear the 
stones : thou washest away the things which grow out of the dust of 
the earth." "He removeth the mountains and they know not: he 
overturneth them in his anger." "He putteth forth his hand upon 
the rock ; he overturneth the mountains by the roots : he cutteth out 
rivers among the rocks." I have not time to go farther into this; 
but you see Job's country was one like your own, full of pleasant 
brooks and rivers, rushing among the rocks, and of all other sweet 
and noble elements of landscape. The magnificent allusions to nat- 
ural scenery throughout the book are therefore calculated to touch 
the heart to the end of time. — Led. 111. 

CHRIST IN NATURAL SCENERY. 

80. At the central point of Jewish prosperity, you have the 
first great naturalist the world ever saw, Solomon. The books 
of the Old Testament, as distinguished from all other early 
writings, are thus prepared for an everlasting influence over 
humanity; and, finally, Christ himself, setting the concluding ex- 
ample to the conduct and thoughts of men, spends nearly his whole 
life in the fields, the mountains, or the small country villages of 
Judea; and in the very closing scenes of his life, will not so much 
as sleep within the walls of Jerusalem, but rests at the little village 
of Bethphage, walking in the morning, and returning in the even- 
ing, through the peaceful avenues of the mount of Olives, to and 
from his work of teaching in the temple. 

81. It would thus naturally follow, from the general tone and 
teaching of the Scriptures, and from the example of our Lord him- 
self, that wherever Christianity was preached and accepted, there 
would be an immediate interest awakened in the works of God, as 
seen in the natural world; and, accordingly, this is the second uni- 
versal and distinctive character of Christian art, as distinguished 
from all pagan work, the first being a peculiar spirituality in its 
conception of the human form, preferring holiness of expression and 
strength of character, to beauty of features or of body, and the sec- 
ond, as I say, its intense fondness for natural objects — animals, 
leaves and flowers, — inducing an immediate transformation of the 
cold and lifeless pagan ornamentation into vivid imagery of nature. 
Of course this manifestation of feeling was at first checked by the 
circumstances under which the Christian religion was disseminated. 
The art of the first three centuries is entirely subordinate, — re- 
strained partly by persecution, partly by a high spirituality, which 



RELIGIOUS LIGHT IN ARCHITECTURE 269 

cared much more about preaching than painting; and then when, 
under Gonstantine, Christianity became the religion of the Roman 
empire, myriads of persons gave the aid of their wealth and of their 
art to the new religion, who were Christians in nothing but the 
name, and who decorated a Christian temple just as they would have 
decorated a pagan one, merely because the new religion had become 
Imperial. Then, just as the new art was beginning to assume a 
distinctive form, down came the northern barbarians upon it; and 
all their superstitions had to be leavened with it, and all their 
hard hands and hearts softened by it, before their art could 
appear in anything like a characteristic form. The warfare in which 
Europe was perpetually plunged retarded this development for ages ; 
but it steadily and gradually prevailed, working from the eighth 
to the eleventh century like a seed in the ground, showing little 
signs of life, but still, if carefully examined, changing essentially 
every day and every hour : at last, in the twelfth century, the blade 
appears above the black earth ; in the thirteenth, the plant is in full 
leaf.— Lec^ III. 

WHY CHRISTIAN AND INFIDEL BOTH LOVE NATURE. 

93. You will ask me — and you will ask me most reasonably — 
how this love of nature in modern days can be connected with 
Christianity, seeing it is as strong in the infidel Shelley as in the 
eacred Wordsworth. Yes, and it is found in far worse men than 
Shelley. Shelley was an honest unbeliever, and a man of warm 
affections; but this new love of nature is found in the most reckless 
and unprincipled of the French novelists, — in Eugene Sue, in 
Dumas, in George Sand, — and that intensely. How is this? Sim- 
ply because the feeling is reactionary ; and, in this phase of it, com- 
mon to the diseased mind as well as to the healthy one. A man 
dying in the fever of intemperance will cry out for water and that 
with a bitterer thirst than a man whose healthy frame naturally 
delights in the mountain spring more than in the wine cup. The 
water is not dishonoured by the thirst of the diseased, nor is nature 
dishonoured by the love of the unworthy. That love is, perhaps, the 
only saving element in their minds ; and it still remains an indisput- 
able truth that the love of nature is a characteristic of the Christian 
heart, just as the hunger for healthy food is characteristic of the 
healthy frame. — Led. III. 

CLOSE OF A GREAT LIFE. — TURNER. 

106. I have told you what Turner was. You have often heard 
what to most people he appeared to be. Imagine what it was for a 
man to live seventy years in this hard world, with the kindest heart 
and the noblest intellect of his time, and never to meet with a single 
word or ray of sympathy, until he felt himself sinking into the grave. 



270 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

From the time he knew his true greatness all the world was turned 
against him: he held his own; but it could not be without rough- 
ness of bearing, and hardening of the temper, if not of the heart. 
No one understood him, no one trusted him, and every one cried 
out against him. Imagine, any of you, the effect upon your own 
minds, if every voice that you heard from the human beings around 
you were raised, year after year, through all your lives, only in 
condemnation of your efforts, and denial of your success. This may 
be borne, and borne easily, by men who have fixed religious prin- 
ciples, or supporting domestic ties. But Turner had no one to teach 
him in his youth, and no one to love him in his old age. Respect 
and affection, if they came at all, came unbelieved, or came too late. 
Naturally irritable, though kind, — naturally suspicious, though gen- 
erous, — the gold gradually became dim, and the most fine gold 
changed, or, if not changed, overcast and clouded. The deep heart 
was still beating, but it was beneath a dark and melancholy mail 
between whose joints, however, sometimes the slighest arrows found 
entrance, and power of giving pain. He received no consolation in 
his last years, nor in his death. Cut off in great part from all so- 
ciety, — first, by labour, and at last by sickness, — hunted to his grave 
by the malignities of small critics, and the jealousies of hopeless 
rivalry, he died in the house of a stranger, — 'One companion of his 
life, and one only, staying with him to the last. The window of 
his death-chamber was turned towards the west, and the sun shone 
upon his face in its setting and rested there, as he expired. — Led. 
III. 

ANCIENT ART RELIGIOUS MODERN ART PROFANE. 

120. This is the great and broad fact which distinguishes mod- 
ern art from old art; that all ancient art was religious, and all 
modern art is profane. Once more, your patience for an instant. I 
say, all ancient art was religious ; that is to say, religion was its first 
object; private luxury or pleasure its second. I say, all modern 
<art is profane; that is, private luxury or pleasure is its first object; 
religion its second. Now you all know, that anything which makes 
religion its second object, makes religion no object. God will put up 
with a great many things in the human heart, but there is one thing 
he will not put up with in it — a second place. He who offers God 
a second place, offers him no place. And there is another mighty 
truth which you all know, that he who makes religion his first ob- 
ject, makes it his whole object: he has no other work in the world 
than God's work. Therefore I do not say that ancient art was more 
religious than modern art. There is no question of degree in this 
matter. Ancient art was religious art; modern art is profane art; 
and between the two the distinction is as firm as between light and 
darkness. — Led. IV. 



RELIGIOUS LIGHT IN ARCHITECTURE 271 

HOW RAPHAEL MABJOID THE DECLINE OF ART. 

125. So justly have the Pre-Raphaelites chosen their time and 
name, that the great change which clouds the career of medigeval art 
was affected, not only in Raphael's time, but by Raphael's own prac- 
tice, and by his practice in the very centre of his available life. 

You remember, doubtless, what high ground we have for placing 
the beginning of human intellectual strength at about the age of 
twelve years. ^ Assume, therefore, this period for the beginning 
of Raphael's strength. He died at thirty-seven. And in his twenty- 
fifth year, one half-year only passed the precise centre of his avail- 
able life, he was sent for to Rome, to decorate the Vatican for Pope 
Julius II., and having until that time worked exclusively in the 
ancient and stern mediaeval manner, he, in the first chamber which 
he decorated in that palace, wrote upon its wall the Mene, Tekel, 
Upharsin, of the Arts of Christianity. 

And he wrote it thus: On one wall of that chamber he placed a 
picture of the World or Kingdom of Theology, presided over by 
Christ. And on the side wall of that same chamber he placed the 
World or Kingdom of Poetry, presided over by Apollo. And from 
that spot and from that hour, the intellect and the art of Italy date 
their degradation. 

126. Observe the significance of this fact is not in the mere 
use of the figure of the heathen god to indicate the domain of poetry. 
Such a symbolical use had been made of the figures of heathen 
deities in the best times of Christian art. But it is in the fact, that 
being called to Rome especially to adorn the palace of the so-called 
head of the church, and called as the chief representative of the 
Christian artists of his time, Raphael had neither religion nor origin- 
ality enough to trace the spirit of poetry and the spirit of philosophy 
to the inspiration of the true God, as well as that of theology; but 
that, on the contrary, he elevated the creations of fancy on the 
one wall, to the same rank as the object of faith upon the other; 
that in deliberate, balanced, opposition to the Rock of the Mount 
Zion, he reared the rock of Parnassus, and the rock of the Acropolis ; 
that, among the masters of poetry we find him enthroning Petrarch 
and Pindar, but not Isaiah nor David, and for lords over the do- 
main of philosophy we find the masters of the school of Athens, but 
neither of those greater masters by the last of whom that school was 
rebuked, — those who received their wisdom from heaven itself, in 
the vision of Gibeon,^ and the lightning of Damascus, 

127. The doom of the arts of Europe went from that chamber, 
and it was brought about in great part by the very excellencies of 
the man who had thus marked the commencement of decline. The 
perfection of execution and the beauty of feature which were at- 

1 Luke ii. 42. 49. 

2 1 Kings, iii. 5. 



272 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

tained in his works, and in those of his great contemporaries, ren- 
dered finish of execution and beauty of form the chief objects of all 
artists; and thenceforward execution was looked for rather than 
thought, and beauty rather than veracity. 

And as I told you, these are the two secondary causes of the de- 
cline of art; the first being the loss of moral purpose. Pray note 
them clearly. In mediaeval art, thought is the first thing, execu- 
tion the second; in modern art execution is the first thing, and 
thought the second. And again, in mediaeval art, truth is first, 
beauty second; in modern art beauty is first, truth second. The 
mediaeval principles led up to Raphael, and the modern principles 
lead down from him. — Led. IV. 



DESPISE NOT OUK YOUTH. 

142. It is woeful, when the young usurp the place, or despise 
the wisdom, of the aged; and among the many dark signs of these 
times, the disobedience and insolence of youth are among the dark- 
est. But with whom is the fault? Youth never yet lost its modesty 
where age had not lost its honour; nor did childhood ever refuse its 
reverence, except where age had forgotten correction. The cry, "Go 
up thou bald head," will never be heard in the land which remem- 
bers the precept, "See that ye despise not one of these little ones;" 
and although indeed youth Tnay become despisable, when its eager 
hope is changed into presumption, and its progressive power into ar- 
rested pride, there is something more despicable still, in the old age 
which has learned neither judgment nor gentleness, which is weak 
without charity, and cold without discretion. — Addenda to Led. IV. 



THE TWO PATHS. 
One Vol. Five Lectures. (1858-9.) 
The subjects of these five lectures are, respectively, as follows ; 

I. The Deteriorative Power of Conventional Art. 

II. The Unity of Art. 

III. Modern Manufacture and Design. 

IV. The Influence of Imagination in Architecture. 

V. The Work of Iron, in Nature, Art, and Policy. 

Mr. Ruskin says that "though spoken at different times" they are 
"intentionally connected in subject." They possess the advantage, 
for the average reader, of a popular style and language, and are 
brimful of instruction and interest to whoever will receive them. 

The following selections are by no means all that we are tempted 
to give, but they must serve our purpose in this volume. 

MORAL qualities IN ART. 

36. Depend upon it, the first universal characteristic of all great art 
is Tenderness, as the second is Truth. I find this more and more 
every day: an infinitude of tenderness is the chief gift and inherit- 
ance of all the truly great men. It is sure to involve a relative in- 
tensity of disdain towards base things, and an appearance of stern- 
ness and arrogance in the eyes of all hard, stupid, and vulgar peo- 
ple — quite terrific to such, if they are capable of terror, and hateful 
to them, if they are capable of nothing higher than hatred. Dante's 
is the great type of this class of mind. I say the first inheritance is 
Tenderness — the second Truth, because the Tenderness is in the make 
of the creature, the Truth in his acquired habits and knowledge; 
besides, the love comes first in dignity as well as in time, and that 
is always pure and complete : the truth, at best, imperfect. — Lect. I. 

ART IS LIFE. 

45. Great art is nothing else than the type of strong and noble life ; 
for, as the ignoble person, in his dealings with all that occurs in the 
world about him, first sees nothing clearly, — looks nothing fairly in 

273 



274 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

the face, and then allows himself to be swept away by the trampling 
torrent, and unescapable force, of the things that he would not fore- 
see, and could not understand: so the noble person, looking the 
facts of the world full in the face, and fathoming them with deep 
faculty, then deals with them in unalarmed intelligence and un- 
hurried strength, and becomes, with his human intellect and will, 
no unconscious nor insignificant agent, in consummating their good, 
and restraining their evil. 

46. Thus in human life you have the two fields of rightful toil for 
ever distinguished, yet for ever associated; Truth first — plan or de- 
sign, founded thereon; so in art, you have the same two fields for 
ever distinguished, for ever a.ssociated; Truth first — plan, or de- 
sign, founded thereon. — Led. 1. 

PURPOSE AND MOTIVE DETERMINES OUR VALUE. 

49. You have the trial of yourselves in your own power; each 
miay undergo at this instant, before his own judgment seat, the 
•ordeal by fire. Ask yourselves what is the leading motive which 
actuates you while you are at work. I do not ask you what your 
leading motive is for working — that is a different thing; you may 
have families to support — parents to help — brides to win ; you may 
have all these, or other such sacred and pre-eminent motives, to press 
'the morning's labour and prompt the twilight thought. But when 
you are fairly at the work, what is the motive then which tells upon 
every touch of it? If it is the love of that which your work represents 
— if, being a landscape painter, it is love of hills and trees that 
moves you — if, being a figure painter, it is love of human beauty and 
human soul that moves you — if, being a flower or animal painter, it 
is love, and wonder, and delight in petal and in limb that move 
you, then the Spirit is upon you, and the earth is yours, and the ful- 
ness thereof. But if, on the other hand, it is petty self-complacency 
in your own skill, trust in precepts and laws, hope for academical or 
popular approbation, or avarice of wealth, — it is quite possible that 
by steady industry, or even by fortunate chance, you may win the 
applause, the position, the fortune, that you desire ; — but one touch 
of true art you will never lay on canvas or on stone as long as you 
live. 

50. Make your choice, boldly and loonsciously, for one way or 
other it must be made. On the dark and dangerous side are set, the 
pride which delights in self-contemplation — the indolence which 
rests in unquestioned forms — the ignorance that despises what is 
fairest among God's creatures, and the dulness that denies what is 
marvellous in His working : there is a life of monotony for your own 
souls, and of misguiding for those of others. And, on the other side, 
is open to your choice the life of the crowned spirit, moving as a 



RELIGIOUS LIGHT IN ARCHITECTURE 275 

light in creation — discovering always — illuminating always, gaining 
every hour in strength, yet bowed down every hour into deeper hu- 
mility ; sure of being right in its aim, sure of being irresistible in its 
progress ; happy in what it has securely done — happier in what, day 
by day, it may as securely hope; happiest at the close of life, when 
the right hand begins to forget its cunning, to remember, that there 
never was a touch of the chisel or the pencil it wielded, but has 
added to the knowledge and quickened the happiness of mankind. — 
Lect. I. 

HOW AETISTS ARE MADE. 

86. I could as soon tell you how to make or manufacture an ear of 
wheat, as to make a good artist of any kind. I can analyze the 
wheat very learnedly for you — tell you there is starch in it, and 
carbon, and silex. I can give you starch, and charcoal, and flint; 
but you are as far from your ear of wheat as you were before. All 
that can possibly be done for any one who wants ears of wheat is 
to show them where to find grains of wheat, and how to sow them, 
and then, with patience, in Heaven's time, the ears will come — or 
will perhaps come — ground and weather permitting. So in this 
matter of making artists — first you must find your artist in the 
grain; then you must plant him; fence and weed the field about 
him; and with patience, ground and weather permitting, vou may 
get an artist out of him — not otherwise. — Lect. III. 

RIGHT THINGS COME OF RIGHT INFLUENCES. 

92. Design is not the offspring of idle fancy : it is the studied result 
of accumulative observation and delightful habit. Without observa- 
tion and experience, no design — -without peace and pleasurableness 
in occupation, no design — and all the lecturings, and teachings, and 
prizes, and principles of art, in the world, are of no use, so long 
as you don't surround your men with happy influences and beau- 
tiful things. It is impossible for them to have right ideas about 
colour, unless they see the lovely colours of nature unspoiled; im- 
possible for them to supply beautiful incident and action in their 
ornament, unless they see beautiful incident and action in the world 
about them. Inform their minds, refine their habits, and you form 
and refine their designs; but keep them illiterate, uncomfortable, 
and in the midst of unbeautiful things, and whatever they do will 
still be spurious, vulgar, and valueless. — Lect. III. 

LIMBS OF THE MIND. 

110. May we not accept this principle — that, as our bodies, to be 
in health, must be generally exercised, so our minds, to be in health, 
must be generally cultivated? You would not call a man healthy 
who had strong arms but was paralytic in his feet; nor one who 



276 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

could walk well, but had no use of his hands; nor one who could 
see well, if he could not hear. You would not voluntarily reduce 
your bodies to any such partially developed state. Much more, 
then, you would not, if you could help it, reduce your minds to it. 
Now, your minds are endowed with a vast number of gifts of totally 
different uses — limbs of mind as it were, which, if you don't exer- 
cise, you cripple. One is curiosity ; that is a gift, a capacity of pleas- 
ure in knowing; which if you destroy, you make yourselves cold 
and dull. Another is sympathy; the power of sharing in the feel- 
ings of living creatures, which if you destroy, you make your- 
selves hard and cruel. Another of your limbs of mind is admira- 
tion; the power of enjoying beauty or ingenuity, which, if you de- 
stroy, you make yourselves base and irreverent. Another is wit; 
or the power of playing with the lights on the many sides of truth ; 
which if you destroy, you make yourselves gloomy, and less useful 
and cheering to others than you might be. So that in choosing your 
way of work it should be your aim, as far as possible, to bring out all 
these faculties, as far as they exist in you ; not one merely, nor an- 
other, but all of them. And the way to bring them out, is simply 
to concern yourselves attentively with the subjects of each faculty. 
To cultivate sympathy you must be among living creatures, and 
thinking about them; and to cultivate admiration, you must be 
among beautiful things and looking at them. — Led. IV. 

EVERYTHING WAITS FOR THE ARTIST. 

131. From visions of angels, to the least important gesture of 
a child at play, whatever may be conceived of Divine, or beheld of 
Human, may be dared or adopted by you : throughout the kingdom 
of animal life, no creature is so vast, or so minute, that you cannot 
deal with it, or bring it into service; the lion and the crocodile will 
crouch about your shafts ; the moth and the bee will sun themselves 
upon your flowers; for you, the fawn will leap; for you, the snail 
be slow ; for you, the dove smooth her bosom ; and the hawk spread 
her wings toward the south. All the wide world of vegetation 
blooms and bends for you ; the leaves tremble that you may bid them 
be still under the marble snow; the thorn and the thistle, which 
the earth casts forth as evil, are to you the kindliest servants; no 
dying petal, nor drooping tendril, is so feeble as to have no more 
help for you; no robed pride of blossom so kingly, but it will lay 
aside its purple to receive at your hands the pale immortality. Is 
there anything in common life too mean, — in common things too 
trivial, — to be ennobled by your touch? As there is nothing in 
life, so there is nothing in lifelessness which has not its lesson for 
you, or its gift; and when you are tired of watching the strength 
of the plume, and the tenderness of the leaf, you may walk down to 
your rough river shore, or into the thickest markets of your thor- 



RELIGIOUS LIGHT IN ARCHITECTURE 277 

oughfares, and there is not a piece of torn cable that will not twine 
into a perfect moulding; there is not a fragment of cast-away mat- 
ting, or shattered basket-work, that will not work into a chequer or 
capital. Yes: and if you gather up the very sand, and break the 
stone on which you tread, among its fragments of all but invisible 
shells you will find forms that will take their place, and that 
proudly, among the starred traceries of your vaulting ; and you, who 
can crown the mountain with its fortress, and the city with its tow- 
ers, are thus able also to give beauty to ashes, and worthiness to 
dust. — Led. IV. 



MORAL UNITY OF SYMPATHY IN AKT. 

132. Don't fancy that you will lower yourselves by sympathy with 
lower creatures ; you cannot sympathize rightly with the higher, un- 
less you do with those : but you have to sympathize with the higher, 
too — with queens, and kings, and martyrs, and angels. Yes, and 
above all, and more than all, with simple humanity in all its needs 
and ways, for there is not one hurried face that passes you in the 
street that will not be impressive, if you can only fathom it. All 
history is open to you, all high thoughts and dreams that the past 
(fortunes of men can suggest, all fairy land is open to you — no vision 
fthat ever haunted forest, or gleamed over 'hill-side, but calls you to 
understand how it came into men's hearts, and may still touch 
them ; and all Paradise is open to you — yes, and the work of Para- 
dise; for in bringing all this, in perpetual and attractive truth, be- 
fore the eyes of your fellow-men, you have to join in the employ- 
ment of the angel&, as well as to imagine their companies. — Led. 
IV. 

FIRST THINGS FIRST. 

135. Men of strong passions and imaginations must care a great 
deal for anything they care for at all ; but the whole question is one 
of first or second. Does your art lead you, or your gain lead you? 
You may like making money exceedingly; but if it come to a fair 
question, whether you are to make five hundred pounds less by this 
business, or to spoil your building, and you choose to spoil your 
building, there's an end of you. So you may be as thirsty for fame 
as a cricket is for cream ; but, if it come to a fair question, whether 
you are to please the mob, or do the thing as you know it ought 
to be done; and you can't do both, and choose to please the mob, 
it's all over with you — there's no hope for you ; nothing that you can 
do will ever be worth a man's glance as he passes by. The test is 
absolute, inevitable — Is your art first with you? Then you are art- 
ists ; you may be, after you have made your money, misers and usur- 
ers; you may be, after you have got your fame, jealous, and proud, 
and wretched, and base; but yet, as long as you won't spoil your 



278 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

work, you are artists. On the other hand — Is your money first with 
you and your fame first with you? Then, you may be very 
charitable with your money, and very magnificent with your money, 
and very graceful in the way you wear your reputation, and very 
courteous to those beneath you, and very acceptable to those above 
you; but you are not artists. — Lect. IV. 



NOBLENESS IN THE AGED. 

137. But above all, accustom yourselves to look for, and to love, all 
nobleness of gesture and feature in the human form ; and remember 
that the highest nobleness is usually among the aged, the poor, and 
the infirm ; you will find, in the end, that it is not the strong arm of 
the soldier, nor the laugh of the young beauty, that are the best 
studies for you. Look at them, and look at them reverently ; but be 
assured that endurance is nobler than strength, and patience than 
beauty; and that it is not in the high church pews, where the gay 
dresses are, but in the church free seats, where the widows' weeds 
are, that you may see the faces that will fit best between the angels' 
wings, in the church porch. — Lect. IV. 

JUSTICE TO SUBORDINATES. 

139. I do not say that you are to surrender your pre-eminence in 
mere unselfish generosity. But say that you must surrender your 
pre-eminence in your love of your building helped by your kind- 
ness ; and that whomsoever you find better able to do what will adorn 
it than you, — that person you are to give place to; and to console 
yourselves for the humiliation, first, by your joy in seeing the edifice 
grow more beautiful under his chisel, and secondly, by your sense 
of having done kindly and justly. But if you are morally strong 
enough to make the kindness and justice the first motive, it will 
be better; — best of all, if you do not consider it as kindness at all, 
but bare and stern justice; for, truly, such help as we can give each 
other in this world is a debt to each other; and the man who perceives 
a superiority or a capacity in a subordinate, and neither confesses, 
nor assists it, is not merely the withholder of kindness, but the com- 
mitter of injury. But be the motive what you will, only see that 
you do the thing ; and take the joy of the consciousness that, as your 
art embraces a wider field than all others — and addresses a vaster 
multitude than all others — and is surer of audience than all others 
— so it is profounder and holier in Fellowship than all others. The 
artist, when his pupil is perfect, must see him leave his side that he 
may declare his distinct, perhaps opponent, skill. Man of science 
wrestles with man of science for priority of discovery, and pursues 
in pangs of jealous haste bis solitary inquiry. You alone are called 
by kindness, — by necessity, — by equity, to fraternity of toil; and 



RELIGIOUS LIGHT IN ARCHITECTURE 279 

thus, in those misty and massive piles which rise above the domestic 
roofs of our ancient cities, there was — there may be again — a mean- 
ing more profound and true than any that fancy so commonly has 
attached to them. Men say their pinnacles point to heaven. Why, 
so does every tree that buds, and every bird that rises as it sings. 
Men say their aisles are good for worship. Why, so is every moun- 
tain glen, and rough sea-shore. But this they have of distinct and 
indisputable glory, — that their mighty walls were never raised, and 
never shall be, but by men who love and aid each other in their 
weakness; — that all their interlacing strength of vaulted stone has 
its foundation upon the stronger arches of manly fellowship, and 
all their changing grace of depressed or lifted pinnacle owes its 
cadence and completeness to sweeter symmetries of human soul. — • 
LecL IV. 

THE MORAL VALUE OF WORK. 

174. A happy nation may be defined as one in which the husband's 
hand is on the plough, and the housewife's on the needle ; so in due 
time reaping its golden harvest, and shining in golden vesture : and 
an unhappy nation is one which, acknowledging no use of plough 
nor needle, will assuredly at last find its storehouse empty in the 
famine, and its breast naked to the cold. 

176. The greater part of the suffering and crime which exist at 
this moment in civilized Europe, arises simply from people not un- 
derstanding this truism — not knowing that produce or wealth is 
eternally connected by the laws of heaven and earth with resolute 
labour ; but hoping in some way to cheat or abrogate this everlasting 
law of life, and to feed where they have not furrowed, and be warm 
where they have not woven. 

If you want knowledge, you must toil for it : if food, you must toil 
for it ; and if pleasure, you must toil for it. But men do not acknowl- 
edge this law, or strive to evade it, hoping to get their knowl- 
edge, and food, and pleasure for nothing; and in this effort they 
either fail of getting them, and remain ignorant and miserable, or 
they obtain them by making other men work for their benefit ; and 
then they are tyrants and robbers. Yes, and worse than robbers. I 
am not one who in the least doubts or disputes the progress of this 
century in many things useful to mankind; but it seems to me a 
very dark sign respecting us that we look with so much indifference 
upon dishonesty and cruelty in the pursuit of wealth. In the dream 
of Nebuchadnezzar it was only the feet that were part of iron and part 
of clay ; but many of us are now getting so cruel in our avarice, that 
it seems as if, in us, the heart were part of iron, and part of clay. — 
Led. V. 

OPPRESSION OF THE POOR. 

179. You cannot but have noticed how often in those parte of the 
Bible which are likely to be opened when people look for guidance, 



28o THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

comfort, or help in the affairs of daily life, namely, the Psalms and 
Proverbs, mention is made of the guilt attaching to the Oppression of 
the poor. Observe: not the neglect of them, but the Oppression of 
them : the word is as frequent as it is strange. You can hardly open 
either book, but somewhere in their pages you will find a description 
of the wicked man's attempts against the poor : such as — "He doth 
ravish the poor when he getteth him into his net." 

"He sitteth in the lurking places of the villages; his eyes are 
privily set against the poor." 

*'In his pride he doth persecute the poor, and blesseth the covet- 
ous, whom God abhorreth." 

"His mouth is full of deceit and fraud; in the secret places doth 
he murder the innocent. Have the workers of iniquity no knowl- 
edge, who eat up my people as they eat bread? They have drawn 
out the sword, and bent the bow, to cast down the poor and needy." 

"They are corrupt, and speak wickedly concerning oppression." 

"Pride compasseth them about as a chain, and violence as a gar- 
ment." 

"Their poison is like the poison of a serpent. Ye weigh the vio- 
lence of your hands in the earth." — Led. V. 



WEIGH THE WORDS OF THE BIBLE. 

180. "Ye weigh the violence of your hands:" — weigh these words 
as well. The last things we ever usually think of weighing are Bible 
words. We like to dream and dispute over them ; but to weigh them, 
and see what their true contents are — anything but that. Yet, weigh 
these; for I have purposely taken all these verses, perhaps more 
striking to you read in this connection, than separately in their 
places, out of the Psalms. Now, do we ever ask ourselves what the 
real meaning of these passages may be, and who these wicked people 
are, who are "murdering the innocent?" You know it is rather sin- 
gular language this! — rather strong language, we might, perhaps, 
call it — hearing it for the first time. Murder! and murder of in- 
nocent people! — nay, even a sort of cannibalism. Eating people, — 
yes, and God's people, too — eating My people as if they were bread I 
swords drawn, bows bent, poison of serpents mixed ! violence of hands 
weighed, measured, and trafficked with as so much coin! where is 
all this going on? Do you suppose it was only going on in the time 
of David, and that nobody but Jews ever murder the poor? If so, 
it would surely be wiser not to mutter and mumble for our daily 
lessons what does not concern us ; but if there be any chance that it 
may concern us, and if this description, in the Psalms, of human 
guilt is at all generally applicable, as the descriptions in the Psalms of 
human sorrow are, may it not be advisable to know wherein this 
guilt is being committed round about us, or by ourselves? and when 
we take the words of the Bible into our mouths in a congregational 



RELIGIOUS LIGHT IN ARCHITECTURE 



2Sr 



way, to be sure whether we mean merely to chant a piece of melo- 
dious poetry relating to other people — (we know not exactly to 
whom) — or to assert our belief in facts bearing somewhat string- 
ently on ourselves and our daily business. And if you make up your 
minds to do this no longer, and take pains to examine into the mat- 
ter, you will find that these strange words, occurring as they do, not 
in a few places only, but almost in every alternate psalm and every 
alternate chapter of proverb, or prophecy, with tremendous reitera- 
tion, were not written for one nation or one time only; but for all 
nations and languages, for all places and all centuries; and it is as 
true of the wicked man now as ever it was of Nabal or Dives, that 
"his eyes are set against the poor." 

181. Set against the poor, mind you. Not merely set away from the 
poor, so as to neglect or lose sight of them, but set against, so as to 
afflict and destroy them. This is the main point I want to fix your 
attention upon. You will often hear sermons about neglect or care- 
lessness of the poor. But neglect and carelessness are not at all the 
points. The Bible hardly ever talks about neglect of the poor. It 
always talks of oppression of the poor — a very different matter. It 
does not merely speak of passing by on the other side, and binding 
up no wounds, but of drawing the sword and ourselves smiting the 
men down. It does not charge us with being idle in the pest-house, 
and giving no medicine, but with being busy in the pest-house, and 
giving much poison. — Lect. V. 

WHY THE POOR ARE POOR AND HOW THEY ARE OPPRESSED. 

185. There will always be in the world some who are not altogether 
intelligent and exemplary ; we shall, I believe, to the end of time find 
the majority somewhat unintelligent, a little inclined to be idle, and 
occasionally, on Saturday night, drunk ; we must even be prepared to 
hear of reprobates who like skittles on Sunday morning better than 
prayers; and of unnatural parents who send their children out to 
heg instead of to go to school. 

186. Now these are the kind of people whom you can oppress, and 
whom you do oppress, and that to purpose, — and with all the more 
cruelty and the greater sting, because it is just their own fault that 
puts them into your power. You know the words about wicked peo- 
ple are, *'He doth ravish the poor when he getteth him into his net." 
This getting into the net is constantly the fault or folly of the suf- 
ferer — his own heedlessness or his own indolence; but after he is 
once in the net, the oppression of him, and making the most of his 
distress, are ours. The nets which we use against the poor are just 
those worldly embarrassments which either their ignorance or their 
improvidence are almost certain at some time or other to bring 



282 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

them into: then, just at the time when we ought to hasten to help 
them, and disentangle them, and teach them how to manage better 
in future, we rush forward to pillage them, and force all we can out 
of them in their adversity. — Led. V. 

THE MORALS OF SPECULATION. 

187. We are considering ut present the various modes in which a 
nation corrupts itself, by not acknowledging the eternal connection 
between its plough and its pleasure; — by striving to get pleasure, 
without working for it. Well, I say the first and commonest way 
of doing so is to try to get the product of other people's work, and 
enjoy it ourselves, by cheapening their labour in times of distress: 
then the second way is that grand one of watching the chances 
of the market; — the way of speculation. Of course there are some 
speculations that are fair and honest — speculations made with our 
own money, and which do not involve in their success the loss, by 
others, of what we gain. But generally modern speculation in- 
volves much risk to others, with chance of profit only to ourselves: 
even in its best conditions it is merely one of the forms of gambling 
or treasure hunting; it is either leaving the steady plough and the 
steady pilgrimage of life, to look for silver mines beside the way; 
or else it is the full stop beside the dice-tables in Vanity Fair — in- 
vesting all the thoughts and passions of the soul in the fall of the 
cards, and choosing rather the wild accidents of idle fortune than 
the calm and accumulative rewards of toil. And this is destructive 
enough, at least to our peace and virtue. But it is usually destructive 
of far more than our peace, or our virtue. — Led. V. 

MORAL VALUE OF RESTRAINT. 

191. No human being, however great or powerful, was ever so free 
as a fish. There is always something that he must, or must not do ; 
while the fish may do whatever he likes. All the kingdoms of the 
w^orld put together are not half so large as the sea, and all the rail- 
roads and wheels that ever were, or will be, invented are not so easy 
as fins. You will find, on fairly thinking of it, that it is his Re- 
straint which is honourable to man, not his Liberty; and, what is 
more, it is restraint which is honourable even in the lower animals. 
A butterfly is much more free than a bee ; but you honour the bee 
more, just because it is subject to certain laws which fit it for orderly 
function in bee society. And throughout the world, of the two ab- 
stract things, liberty and restraint, restraint is always the more hon- 
ourable. It is true, indeed, that in these and all other matters you 
never can reason finally from the abstraction, for both liberty and 
restraint are good when they are nobly chosen, and both are bad 
when they are basely chosen ; but of the two, I repeat, it is restraint 
■which characterizes the higher creature, and betters the lower creat- 



RELIGIOUS LIGHT IN ARCHITECTURE 283 

ure: and, from the ministering of the archangel to the labour of 
the insect, — from the poisoning of the planets to the gravitation of a 
grain of dust, — the power and glory of all creatures, and all matter, 
consist in their obedience, not in their freedom. The Sun has no 
liberty — a dead leaf has much. The dust of which you are formed 
has no liberty. Its liberty will come — with its corruption. — Lect. V. 

WAR, — RIGHT OR WRONG? 

195. You may be surprised at my implying that war itself 
can be right, or necessary, or noble at all. Nor do I speak of all 
war as necessary, nor of all war as noble. Both peace and war are 
noble or ignoble according to their kind and occasion. No man has 
a profounder sense of the horror and guilt of ignoble war than I 
have : I have personally seen its effects, upon nations, of unmitigated 
evil, on soul and body, with perhaps as much pity, and as much 
bitterness of indignation, as any of those whom you will hear con- 
tinually declaiming in the cause of peace. But peace may be sought 
in two ways. One way is as Gideon sought it, when he built his 
altar in Ophrah, naming it, "God send peace," yet sought this peace 
that he loved, as he was ordered to seek it, and the peace was sent, 
in God's way: — "the country was in quietness forty years in the 
days of Gideon." And the other way of seeking peace is as Mena- 
hem sought it when he gave the King of Assyria a thousand talents 
of silver that "his hand might be with him." That is, you may 
either win your peace, or buy it: — win it, by resistance to evil; — 
buy it, by compromise with evil. You may buy your peace, with 
silenced consciences; — you may buy it, with broken vows, — buy it, 
with lying words, — buy it, with base connivances, — buy it, with the 
blood of the slain, and the cry of the captive, and the silence of lost 
souls — over hemispheres of the earth, while you sit smiling at your 
serene hearths, lisping comfortable prayers evening and morning. 

196. No peace wus ever won from Fate by subterfuge or agree- 
ment ; no peace is in store for any of us, but that which we shall win 
by victory over shame or sin; — victory over the sin that oppresses,, 
as well as over that which corrupts. For many a year to come, the 
sword of every righteous nation must be whetted to save or subdue ; 
nor will it be by patience of others' suffering, but by the offering 
of your own, that you ever will draw nearer to the time when the 
great change shall pass upon the iron of the earth; — when men 
shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into 
pruning-hooks ; neither shall they learn war any more. — Lect. V. 



VI 

THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
An Essay. (1865.) 

This is a "paper" which was read before the Royal Institution of 
British Architects, treating of the study of Architecture in schools, 
and was republished, together with a short paper on "The Opening 
of the Crystal Palace," in Vol. I of "On the Old Road." 

It is quite dififerent in treatment, and yet it strongly confirms the 
lectures on the same subject, delivered eleven years earlier, especially 
as to the deterioration of Art when divorced from religion. The two 
or three selections which follow establish the truth of this statement : 
— another testimony of the fact that Ruskin never departed from 
Truth as the basis of Art, and of the recognition of the Divine Be- 
ting as the source of truth. 

SUPERSTITION AND NATURALISM. 

I am no Puritan, and have never praised or advocated Puritanical 
Art. The two pictures which I would last part with out of our Na- 
tional gallery, if there were question of parting with any, would be 
Titian's Bacchus and Gorregio's Venus. But the noble naturalism 
of these was the fruit of ages of previous courage, continence, and 
religion — it was the fulness of passion in the life of a Britomart. 
But the mid age and old age of nations is not like the mid age or 
old age of noble women. National decrepitude must be criminal. 
National death can only be by disease, and yet it is almost impos- 
sible, out of the history of the art of nations, to elicit the true con- 
ditions relating to its decline in any demonstrable manner. The 
history of Italian art is that of a struggle between superstition and 
naturalism on one side, between continence and sensuality on an- 
other. So far as naturalism prevailed over superstition, there is al- 
ways progress; so far as sensuality over chastity, death. And, the 
two contests are simultaneous. It is impossible to distinguish one 
victory from the other. Observe, however, I say victory over super- 
stition, not over religion. Let me carefully define the difference. 

284 



RELIGIOUS LIGHT IN ARCHITECTURE 285 

SUPERSTITION AND RELIGION. 

Superstition, in all times and among all nations, is the fear of a 
spirit whose passions are those of a man, whose acts are the acts 
of a man ; who is present in some places, not in others ; who makes 
some places holy, and not others ; who is kind to one person, unkind 
to another; who is pleased or angry according to the degree of at- 
tention you pay to him, or praise you refuse to him ; who is hostile 
generally to human pleasure, but may be bribed by sacrifice of a 
part of that pleasure into permitting the rest. This, whatever form 
of faith it colours, is the essence of superstition. And religion is 
the belief in a Spirit whose mercies are over all His works — who is 
kind even to the unthankful and the evil ; who is everywhere pres- 
ent, and therefore is in no place to be sought, and in no place to be 
evaded; to whom all creatures, times, and things are everlastingly 
holy, and who claims — not tithes of wealth, nor sevenths of days — 
but all the wealth that we have, and all the days that we live, and 
all the beings that we are, but who claims that totality because He 
delights only in the delight of His creatures ; and because, therefore, 
the one duty that they owe to Him, and the only service they can 
render Him, is to be happy. A Spirit, therefore, whose eternal be- 
nevolence cannot be angered, cannot be appeased; whose laws are 
everlasting and inexorable, so that heaven and earth must indeed 
pass away if one jot of them failed: laws which attach to every 
wrong and error a measured, inevitable penalty; to every rightness 
and prudence, an assured reward ; penalty, of which the remittance 
cannot be purchased; and reward, of which the promise cannot be 
broken. 

Religion devotes the artist, hand and mind, to the service of 
the gods; superstition makes him the slave of ecclesiastical pride, 
or forbids his work altogether, in terror or disdain. Religion perfects 
the form of the divine statue; superstition distorts it into ghastly 
grotesque. Religion contemplates the gods as the lords of healing 
and life, surrounds them with glory of affectionate service, and fes- 
tivity of pure human beauty. Superstition contemplates its idols as 
lords of death, appeases them with blood, and vows itself to them 
in torture and solitude. Religion proselytizes by love, superstition 
by war; religion teaches by example, superstition by persecution. 
Religion gave granite shrine to the Egyptian, golden temple to the 
Jew, sculptured corridor to the Greek, pillared aisle and frescoed 
wall to the Christian. Superstition made idols of the splendours by 
which religion had spoken: reverenced pictures and stones, instead 
of truths; letters and laws instead of acts; and for ever, in various 
madness of fantastic desolation, kneels in the temple while it cruci- 
fies the Christ. 



286 THE RELIGION OF' RUSKIN 

SUPERSTITIOUS WORSHIP BETTER THAN INFIDELITY. 

On the other hand, to reason resisting superstition, we owe the 
entire compass of modern energies and sciences: the healthy laws 
of life, and the possibilities of future progress. But to infidelity 
resisting religion (or which is often enough the case, taking the 
mask of it), we owe sensuality, cruelty and war, insolence and 
avarice, modern political economy, life by conservation of forces, 
and salvation by every man's looking after his own interests; and 
generally, whatsoever of guilt, and folly, and death, there is abroad 
among us. And of the two, a thousand-fold rather let us retain some 
colour of superstition, so that we may keep also some strength of 
religion, than comfort ourselves with colour of reason for the deso- 
lation of godlessness. I would say to every youth who entered our 
schools — be a Mahometan, a Diana-worshipper, a Fire-worshipper, 
Root-worshipper, if you will; but at least be so much a man as to 
know what worship means. I had rather, a million-fold rather, see 
you one of those "quibus hsec nascuntur in hortis numina," than 
one of those quibus haec non nascuntur in cordibus lumina; and 
who are, by everlasting orphanage, divided from the Father of Spir- 
its, who is also the Father of lights, from whom cometh every good 
and perfect gift. 

TRUE MANLINESS. 

"So much of man," I say, feeling profoundly that all right ex- 
ercise of any human gift, so descended from the Giver of good, de- 
pends on the primary formation of the character of true manli- 
ness in the youth, — that is to say, of a majestic, grave and deliberate 
strength. How strange the words sound; how little does it seem 
possible to conceive of majesty, and gravity, and deliberation in 
the daily track of modern life. Yet, gentlemen, we need not hope 
that our work will be majestic if there is no majesty in ourselves. 
The word "manly" has come to mean practically, among us, a 
schoolboy's character, not a man's. We are, at our best, thought- 
lessly impetuous, fond of adventure and excitement; curious in 
knowledge for its novelty, not for its system and results; faithful 
and affectionate to those among whom we are by chance cast, but 
gently and calmly insolent to strangers; we are stupidly conscien- 
tious, and instinctively brave, and always ready to cast away the 
lives we take no pains to make valuable, in causes of which we have 
never ascertained the justice. This is our highest type — notable 
peculiarly among nations for its gentleness, together with its cour- 
age; but in lower conditions it is especially liable to degradation by 
its love of just and of vulgar sensation. It is against this fatal ten- 
dency to vile play that we have chiefly to contend. 



VII 

VAL D' ARNO. 
One Vol. Ten Lectures. (1873.) 

These ten lectures were part of Ruskin's work as "Slade" Professor 
of Oxford University. They were directed to the subject of Tuscan 
Art and incidentally treating of Tuscan History. His characteristic 
discursive habit is strikingly present in this volume. One of the lec- 
tures is on the subject of "Franchise." What this has to do with the 
general subject it is difficult to see; and yet, when we read it all, 
there does not appear any lack of fitness. In this particular lecture, 
(8) he says: — 

The Latin for franchise is libertas; the Greek is eXevOepia. In the 
thoughts of all three nations, the idea is precisely the same, and the 
word used for the idea by each nation therefore accurately trans? 
lates the word of the other: e\sv6epLa — libertas — franchise — recip- 
rocally translate each other. . . . And that common idea, 
which the words express, as all the careful scholars among you will 
know, is, with all the three nations, mainly of deliverance from the 
slavery of passion. To hd ekcvOepo^, liber, or franc, is first to have 
learned how to rule our own passions ; and then, certain that our own 
conduct is right, to persist in that conduct against all resistance, 
whether of counter-opinion, counter-pain, or counter-pleasure. To 
be defiant alike of the mob's thought, of the adversary's threat, and 
the harlot's temptation, — this is in the meaning of every great na- 
tion to be free ; and the one condition upon which that freedom can 
be obtained is pronounced to you in a single verse of the 119th 
Psalm, "I will walk at liberty, for I seek Thy precepts." 

MODESTY AND PIETY. 

224. All piety begins in modesty. You must feel that you are a 
very little creature, and that you had better do as you are bid. You 
will then begin to think what you are bid to do, and who bids it. 
And you will find, unless you are very unhappy indeed, that there is 

287 



288 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

always a quite clear notion of right and wrong in your minds, which 
you can either obey or disobey, at your pleasure. Obey it simply 
and resolutely; it will become clearer to you every day: and in 
obedience to it, you will find a sense of being in harmony with 
nature, and at peace with God, and all His creatures. You will not 
understand how the peace comes, nor even in what it consists. It is 
the peace that passes understanding; — it is just as visionary and 
imaginative as love is, and just as real, and just as necessary to the 
life of man. It is the only source of true cheerfulness, and of true 
common sense; and whether you believe the Bible, or don't, — or, 
believe the Koran, or don't, — or believe the Vedas, or don't, — it will 
enable you to believe in God, and please Him, and be such a part 
of the evSoKui of the universe as your nature fits you to be, in 
His sight, faithful in awe to the powers that are above you, and 
gracious in regard to the creatures that are around. — Led. IX. 

NATURAL HISTORY OF THE SOUL. 

226. But if you will spend a thoughtful hour or two in reading 
the scripture, which pious Greeks read, not indeed on daintily 
printed paper, but on daintily painted clay, — if you will examine, 
that is to say, the scriptures of the Athenian religion, on their Pan- 
Athenaic vases, in their faithful days, you will find that the gift of 
the literal xP'o-/*«> or anointing oil, to the victor in the kingly and 
visible contest of life, is signed always with the image of that spirit 
or goddess of the air who was the source of their invisible life. And 
let me, before quitting this part of my subject, give you one piece of 
what you will find useful counsel. If ever from the right apothe- 
cary, or ixvpoTTOiXr]';, you get any of that xp^rfxa, — don't be careful, 
when you set it by, of looking for dead dragons or dead dogs in it. 
But look out for the dead flies. 

227. Again ; remember, I only quote St. Paul as I quote Xeno- 
phon to you; but I expect you to get some good from both. As I 
want you to think what Xenophon means by "/tavTcta," so I want you 
to consider also what St. Paul means by "7rpo<^i;Teta." He tells you to 
prove all things, — to hold fast what is good, and not to despise 
"prophesyings." 

228. Now it is quite literally probable, that this world, haying 
now for some five hundred years absolutely refused to do as it is 
plainly bid by every prophet that ever spoke in any nation, and 
having reduced itself therefore to Saul's condition, when he was 
answered neither by Urim nor by prophets, may be now, while you 
sit there, receiving necromantic answers from the witch of Endor. 
But with that possibility you have no concern. There is a prophetic 
power in your own hearts, known to the Greeks, known to the Jews, 
known to the Apostles, and knowable by you. If it is now silent to 
you, do not despise it by tranquillity under that privation; if it 
speaks to you, do not despise it by disobedience. — Led. IX. 



RELIGIOUS LIGHT IN ARCHITECTURE 289 

PKOSELYTISM. 

231. The value of religious ceremonial, and the virtue of religious 
truth, consist in the meek fulfilment of the one as the fond habit of a 
family ; and the meek acceptance of the other, as the narrow knowl- 
edge of a child. And both are destroyed at once, and the ceremonial 
or doctrinal prejudice becomes only an occasion of sin, if they make 
us either wise in our own conceit, or violent in our methods of prose- 
lytism. Of those who will compass sea and land to make one proselyte, 
it is too generally true that they are themselves the children of hell, 
and make their proselytes twofold more so. — Led. IX. 



THE angel's message OF PEACE, 

253. In the passage, so often read by us, which announces the 
advent of Christianity as the dawn of peace on earth, we habitually 
neglect great part of the promise, owing to the false translation of 
the second clause of the sentence. I cannot understand how it should 
be still needful to point out to you here in Oxford that neither the 
Greek words "ev av^pw7rot?ei»SoKta," nor those of the vulgate, ''in terra 
pax hominibus bonae voluntatis," in the slightest degree justify our 
English words, "good will to men." 

Of God's goodwill to men, and to all creatures, for ever, there 
needed no proclamation by angels. But that men should be able 
to please Him, — that their wills should be made holy, and they 
should not only possess peace in themselves, but be able to give joy 
to their God, in the sense in which He afterwards is pleased with 
His own baptized Son ; — this was a new thing for Angels to declare, 
and for shepherds to believe. 

254. And the error was made yet more fatal by its repetition in 
a passage of parallel importance, — the thanksgiving, namely, offered 
by Christ, that His Father, while He had hidden what it was best 
to know, not from the wise and prudent, but from some among the 
wise and prudent, and had revealed it unto babes; not ''for so it 
seemed good," in His sight, but "that there might be well pleasing 
in His sight," — namely, that the wise and simple might equally live 
in the necessary knowledge, and enjoyed presence, of God. And if, 
having accurately read these vital passages, you then as carefully 
consider the tenour of the two songs of human joy in the birth of 
Christ, the Magnificat, and the Nunc dimittis, you will find the theme 
of both to be, not the newness of blessing, but the equity which dis- 
appoints the cruelty and humbles the strength of men ; which scat- 
ters the proud in the imagination of their hearts; which fills the 
hungry with good things; and is not only the glory of Israel, but 
the light of the Gentiles. — Led. X. 



290 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

DIVERSITIES OF RELIGION OF DIVINE APPOINTMENT. 

The will of Heaven, which grants the grace and ordains the di- 
versities of Religion, needs no defence, and sustains no defeat, by 
the humours of men; and our first business in relation to it is to 
silence our wishes, and to calm our fears. If, in such modest and 
disciplined temper, you arrange your increasing knowledge of the 
history of mankind, you will have no final difficulty in distinguish- 
ing the operation of the Master's law from the consequences of the 
disobedience to it which He permits; nor will you respect the law 
less, because, accepting only the obedience of love, it neither hastily 
punishes, nor pompously rewards, with what men think reward or 
chastisement. Not always under the feet of Korah the earth is rent ; 
not always at the call of Elijah the clouds gather; but the guarding 
mountains for ever stand round about Jerusalem; and the rain, 
miraculous evermore, makes green the fields for the evil and the 
good. 

280. And if you will fix your minds only on the conditions of 
human life which the Giver of it demands, "He hath shown thee, 
oh man, what is good, and what doth thy Lord require of thee, but 
to do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God," 
you will find that such obedience is always acknowledged by tem- 
poral blessing. If, turning from the manifest miseries of cruel am- 
bition, and manifest wanderings of insolent belief, you summon to 
your thoughts rather the state of unrecorded multitudes, who la- 
boured in silence, and adored in humility, widely as the snows of 
Christendom brought memory of the Birth of Christ, or her spring 
sunshine, of His Resurrection, you may know that the promise of 
the Bethlehem angels has been literally fulfilled. — Led. X. 



VIII 

ARATRA PENTELICI. 

One Vol. Seven Lectures. (1871.) 

These seven lectures on the Elements of Sculpture, like those on 
Art, were a part of Ruskin's work as "Slade" Professor of Oxford 
University and are, therefore, the product of his best research, erudi- 
tion and judgment. The subjects treated are, (I) The Division of 
Arts, (II) Idolatry, (III) Imagination, (IV) Likeness, (V) Struc- 
ture, (VI) The School of Athens, (VII) Michael Angelo and Tin- 
toret. Drawings, diagrams, coins, figures, and other objects were 
used for illustration. 

This is not one of the more popular books but it is very entertain- 
ing as well as profitable reading. 

GROWTH OF MANLINESS. 

30. The greater part of the technic energy of men, as yet, has 
indicated a kind of childhood; and that the race becomes, if not 
more wise, at least more manly, with every gained century. I can 
fancy that all this sculpturing and painting of ours may be looked 
back upon, in some distant time, as a kind of doll-making, and that 
the words of Sir Isaac Newton may be smiled at no more: only it 
will not be for stars that we desert our stone dolls, but for men. 
When the day comes, as come it must, in which we no more deface 
and defile God's image in living clay, I am not sure that we shall 
any of us care so much for the images made of Him, in burnt 
clay. — Led. I. 

75. Observe, however, childishness does not necessarily imply 
universal inferiority; there may be a vigorous, acute, pure and sol- 
emn childhood, and there may be a weak, foul, and ridiculous con- 
dition of advanced life ; but the one is still essentially the childish, 
and the other the adult phase of existence. — Led. III. 

IDOLATRY. 

46. I need not say that the harm of the idolatry must depend on 
the certainty of the negative. If there be a real presence in a pillar 
of cloud, in an unconsuming flame, or in a still small voice, it is no 
sin to bow down before these. 

291 



«92 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

63. But the elementary causes, both of this frivolity in you, and 
of worse than frivolity in older persons, are the two forms of deadly 
Idolatry which are now all but universal in England. 

The first of these is the worship of the Eidholon, or Phantasm of 
Wealth; which is briefly to be defined as the servile apprehension 
of an active power in Money, and the submission to it as the God of 
our life. 

64. The second elementary cause of the loss of our nobly im- 
aginative faculty, is the worship of the Letter, instead of the Spirit, 
in what we chiefly accept as the ordinance and. teaching of Deity; 
and the apprehension of a healing sacredness in the act of reading 
the Book whose primal commands we refuse to obey. 

No feather idol of Polynesia was ever a sign of a more shameful 
idolatry, than the modern notion in the minds of certainly the ma- 
jority of English religious persons, that the Word of God, by which 
the heavens were of old, and the earth, standing out of the water and 
in the water, — the Word of God which came to the prophets, and 
comes still for ever to all who will hear it, (and to many who will 
forbear) ; and which, called Faithful and True, is to lead forth, in 
the judgment, the armies of heaven, — that this "Word of God" may 
yet be bound at our pleasure in morocco, and carried about in a 
young lady's pocket, with tasselled ribands to mark the passages 
she most approves of. 



EVOLUTION — WHAT WE HAVE BEEN — WHAT WE ARE I 

103. Whether your Creator shaped you with fingers, or tools, as 
a sculptor would a lump of clay, or gradually raised you to man- 
hood through a series of inferior forms, is only of moment to you in 
this respect — that in the one case you cannot expect your children to 
be nobler creatures than you are yourselves — in the other, every act 
and thought of your present life may be hastening the advent of a 
race which will look back to you, their fathers, with incredulous 
disdain. 

104. But that you are yourselves capable of that disdain and dis- 
may ; that you are ashamed of having been apes, if you ever were so ; 
that you acknowledge instinctively, a relation of better and worse, 
and a law respecting what is noble and base, which makes it no ques- 
tion to you that the man is worthier than the baboon — this is a 
fact of infinite significance. This law of preference in your hearts 
is the true essence of your being, and the consciousness of that law 
is a more positive existence than any dependent on the coherence 
or forms of matter. — Led. III. 



RELIGIOUS LIGHT IN ARCHITECTURE 293 

THE WORSHIP OF GEAVEN IMAGES. 

108. "Thou shalt not bow down to them, nor worship them." 
"Assuredly no," we answered once, in our pride; and through 
porch and aisle, broke down the carved work thereof, with axes 
and hammers. 

Who would have thought the day bo near when we should bow 
down to worship, not the creatures, but their atoms, — not the forces 
that form, but those that dissolve them? Trust me, gentlemen, the 
command which is stringent against adoration of brutality, is string- 
ent no less against adoration of chaos, nor is faith in an image fall- 
en from heaven to be reformed by a faith only in the phenomenon 
of decadence. We have ceased from the making of monsters to be ap- 
peased by sacrifice ; — it is well, — if indeed we have also ceased from 
making them in our thoughts. We have learned to distrust the 
adorning of fair phantasms, to which we once sought for succour ; — 
it is well, if we learn to distrust also the adorning of those to which 
we seek, for temptation ; but the verity of gains like these can only 
be known by our confession of the divine seal of strength and beauty 
upon the tempered frame, and honour in the fervent heart, by which, 
increasing visibly, may yet be manifested to us the holy presence, 
and the approving love, of the Loving God, who visits the iniquities 
of the Fathers upon the Children, unto the third and fourth gen- 
eration of them that hate Him, and shows mercy unto thousands 
in them that love Him, and keep His Commandments. — Led. Ill, 

PROVIDENCE. 

149. And here I must ask your attention to the idea, and, more 
than idea, — the fact, involved in that infinitely misused term, 
"Providentia," when applied to the Divine Power. In its truest 
sense and scholarly use, it is a human virtue, llpofirjOeta ; the personal 
type of it is in Prometheus, and all the first power of rexvr], is from 
him, as compared to the weakness of days when men without fore- 
sight "€<f)vpov ILK7J Travra." But, SO far as we used the word "Provi- 
dence" as an attribute of the Maker and Giver of all things, it does 
not mean that in a shipwreck He takes care of the passengers who are 
to be saved and takes none of those who are to be drowned; but it 
does mean that every race of creatures is born into the world under 
circumstances of approximate adaptation to its necessities; and, be- 
yond all others, the ingenious and observant race of man is sur- 
rounded with elements naturally good for his food, pleasant to his 
sight, and suitable for the subjects of his ingenuity; — the stone, 
metal, and clay of the earth he walks upon lending themselves at 
once to his hand, for all manner of workmanship. — Led. V, 



IX 

MORNINGS IN FLORENCE. 
Six Lectures. (1875-7.) 

In 1876 Ruskin visited Florence to study the religious art of 
that historic city. On his return to his work, as University Professor 
at Oxford, he gave the result of these studies in six lectures which 
he issued in separate pamphlets, and they were afterwards pub- 
lished in book form. These lectures are so constructed that they 
do not lend themselves readily to our method of selection, but they 
are peculiarly interesting reading, teeming with suggestion and les- 
son to whosoever will. The selections following are, therefore, an 
invitation to read the whole volume. 

FILIAL OBEDIENCE AND PARENTAL DUTY. 

The first duty of a child is to obey its father and mother; as the 
first duty of a citizen is to obey the laws of his state. . . . On 
the other hand, the father and mother have also a fixed duty to the 
child — not to provoke it to wrath. I have never heard this text 
explained from the pulpit, which is curious. For it appears to me 
that God will expect the parents to understand their duty to their 
children, better even than children can be expected to know their 
duty to their parents. ... A child's duty is to obey its parents. 
It is never said anywhere in the Bible, and never was yet said, in 
any good or wise book, that a man's or a woman's, is. When, pre- 
cisely, a child becomes a man or a woman, it can no more be said, 
than when it should first stand on its legs. But a time assuredly 
comes when it should. In great states, children are always trying 
to remain children, and the parents wanting to make men and 
women of them. In vile states, the children are always wanting to 
be men and women, and the parents to keep them children. It 
may be — and happy the house in which it is so — that the father's, 
at least equal intellect, and older experience, may remain to the end 
of his life a law unto his children, not of force, but of perfect guid- 
ance, with perfect love. Rarely it is so ; not often possible. It is as 
natural for the old to be prejudiced as for the young to be presump- 
tuous. ... If there be any truth in Christianity at all, there 
will come, for all true disciples, a time when they have to take that 

294 



RELIGIOUS LIGHT IN ARCHITECTURE 295 

saying to heart, "He that loveth father or mother more than Me, 
is not worthy of Me." 

"Loveth" — observe. There is no talk of disobeying fathers or 
mothers whom you do not love, or of running away from a home 
where you would rather not stay. But to leave the home which is your 
peace and to be at enmity with those who are most dear to you — this, 
if there be any meaning in Christ's words, one day or other will be 
demanded of his true followers. And there is meaning in Christ's 
words. Whatever misuse may have been made of them, — whatever 
false prophets have called the young children to them, not to bless, 
but to curse, the assured fact remains, that if you will obey God, there 
will come a moment when the voice of man will be raised, with all 
its holiest natural authority, against you. The friend and the wise 
adviser — the brother and the sister — the father and the master — the 
entire feight of the scornful stupidity of the vulgar world — for once, 
they will be against you, all at one. You have to obey God rather 
than man. The human race, with all its wisdom and love, all its 
indignation and folly, on the one side, — God alone on the other. 
You have to choose. — The Third Morning. 



ST. MARK'S REST. 

Eleven Chaps. (1879.) 

This interesting volume was written, as Ruskin says in his sub- 
title, as a "History of Venice — for the help of the few travellers 
who still care for her monuments." It is a sort of supplement to 
the "Stones of Venice." 

The book consists of eight chapters, two supplements, and an ap- 
pendix to the last chapter, to which (appendix) he has given the 
title of Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus. At the head of this he quotes from 
"The Stones of Venice" referring to St. Mark's at Venice: "The 
whole edifice is to be regarded less as a temple wherein to pray than 
as itself a Book of Common Prayer, a vast illuminated missal, bound 
with alabaster instead of parchment." 

The 'Opening paragraph of his preface gives a key to the vol- 
ume: — 

"Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts — 
the book of their deeds, the book of their words, and the book of their 
art. Not one of these books can be understood unless we read the 
two others; but of the three, the only quite trustworthy one is the 
last. The acts of a nation may be triumphant by its good fortune; 
and its words mighty by the genius of a few of its children : but its 
art, -only by the general gifts and common sympathies of the race." 

THE OLD KNIGHTHOOD. 

For many centuries the Knights of Christendom wore their re- 
ligion gay as their crest, familiar as their gauntlet, shook it high in 
the summer air, hurled it fiercely in other people's faces, grasped 
their spear the firmer for it, sat their horses the prouder ; but it never 
entered into their minds for an instant to ask the meaning of it! 
"Forgive us our sins :" by all means — yes, and the next garrison that 
holds out a day longer than is convenient to us, hang them every 
man to his battlement. "Give us this day our daily bread," — yes, 
and our neighbor's also, if we have any luck. "Our Lady and the 
saints 1" Is there any infidel dog that doubts of them? — in God'i 

296 



RELIGIOUS LIGHT IN ARCHITECTURE 297 

name, boot and spur — and let us have the head off him. It went on 
so, frankly and bravely, to the twelfth century, at the earliest ; when 
men begin to think in a serious manner; more or less of gentle 
manners and domestic comfort being also then conceivable and at- 
tainable. Rosamond is not any more asked to drink out of her 
father's skull. Rooms begin to be matted and wainscoted; shops to 
hold store of marvellous foreign wares; knights and ladies learn to 
spell, and to read, with pleasure; music is everywhere; — Death, also. 
Much to enjoy — much to learn, and to endure — with Death always at 
the gates. "If war fail thee in thine own country, get thee with 
haste into another," says the faithful old French knight to the boy- 
chevalier, in early fourteenth century days. 

GOD KNOWS. 

No country stays more than two centuries in this intermediate 
phase between Faith and Reason. In France it lasted from about 
1150 to 1350; in England, 1200 to 1400; in Venice, 1300 to 1500. 
The course of it is always in the gradual development of Christian- 
ity, — till her yoke gets at once too aerial, and too straight, for the mob, 
who break through it at last as if it were so much gossamer; and 
at the same fatal time, wealth and luxury, with the vanity of cor- 
rupt learning, foul the faith of the upper classes, who now begin 
to wear their Christianity, not tossed for a crest high over their 
armor, but stuck as a plaster over their sores, inside of their clothes. 
Then comes printing, and universal gabble of fools ; gunpowder, and 
the end of all the noble methods of war ; trade, and universal swind- 
ling; wealth, and universal gambling; idleness, and universal har- 
lotry; and so at last — Modern Science and Political Economy; and 
the reign of St. Petroleum instead of St. Peter. Out of which God 
only knows what is to come next; but He does know, whatever the 
Jew swindlers and apothecaries' 'prentices think about it. — Ch. VI. 

MANY '"lives op CHRIST.'' 

42. You have had various "lives of Christ," German and other, 
lately provided among your other severely historical studies. Some, 
critical; and some, sentimental. But there is only one light by 
which you can read the life of Christ, — the light of the life you now 
lead in the flesh ; and that not the natural, but the won life, "Never- 
theless, I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." — Ch. VIII. 

"the calling of MATTHEW." 

The Gospel which the publican wrote for us, with its perfect ser- 
mon on the Mount, and mostly more harmonious and gentle fulness, 
in places where St. Luke is formal, St. John mysterious, and St. 
Mark brief, — ^this Gospel, according to St. Matthew, I should think. 



298 THE RELIGION OF RUSK IN 

if we had to choose one out of all the books in the Bible for a prison 
or desert friend, would be the one we should keep. 

And we do not enough think how much that leaving the receipt 
of custom meant, as a sign of the man's nature, who was to leave 
us such a notable piece of literature. . . . This call from receipt of 
custom, he takes for the symbol of the universal call to leave all that 
we have, and are doing. "Whosoever forsaketh not all that he 
hath, cannot be my disciple." For the other calls were easily obeyed 
in comparison of this. To leave one's often empty nets and nightly 
toil on sea, and become fishers of men, probably you might find 
pescatori enough on the Riva there, within a hundred paces of you, 
who would take the chance at once, if any gentle person offered it 
them. James and Jude — Christ's cousins — no thanks to them for 
following Him; their own home conceivably no richer than His. 
Thomas and Philip, I suppose, somewhat thoughtful persons on 
spiritual matters, questioning of them long since ; going out to hear 
St. John preach, and to see whom he had seen. But this man, busy 
in the place of business — engaged in the interests of foreign gov- 
ernments — suddenly the Messiah, passing by, says "Follow me!'^ 
and he rises up, gives Him his hand, "Yea! to the death;" and ab- 
sconds from his desk in that electric manner on the instant, leaving 
his cash-box unlocked, and his books for whoso list to balance 1 — a 
very remarkable kind of person indeed, it seems to me. 

Do not think Christ would have called a bad or corrupt publican 
— much less that a bad or corrupt publican would have obeyed the 
call. Your modern English evangelical doctrine that Christ has a 
special liking for the souls of rascals is the absurdest basilisk of a 
doctrine that ever pranced on judgment steps. That which is lost 
He comes to save, — yes; but not that which is defiantly going the 
way He has forbidden. He showed you plainly enough what kind 
of publican He would call, having chosen two, both of the best; 
"Behold, Lord, if I have taken anything from any man, I restore it 
fourfold I" — a beautiful manner of trade. — The Shrine of the Slaves, 
Supplement 1. 



BOOK FOURTH 

Religious Studies in Nature 



RELIGIOUS STUDIES IN 
NATURE 



ETHICS OF THE DUST. 
Ten Lectures. (1865.) 

The spirit of the philosopher was never more radiant in Ruskin 
than when talking to children, and especially to girls. In his old 
age he was "young again" when leading young people in excursions 
through some of Nature's many great plains and grooves. 

The "Ethics of the Dust" is a rare book, not only for the young, 
but it is advanced reading for many who are no longer young in 
years. CoUingwood tells us that it is practically a report of actual 
talks with a group of young people whom the Author met in a visit 
to Winnington in Cheshire. "The method," he says, "is the kin- 
dergarten method carried a step, many steps further." 

The book is indeed a charming one, written in the form of a 
Conversation Class where study seems to have blended with play and 
the inquisitive curiosity of an impromptu class of young ladies, 
from nine to twenty years of age. This conversational exercise 
leads to all sorts of questions which result in short talks, or lectures, 
from the "Old Lecturer" on Crystallography, Theology, Political 
Economy, and Moral Philosophy. 

Carlyle expressed his delight on receipt of an early copy of the 
book, in a letter in which he says : " 'The Ethics of Dust' which I 
devoured with pause, and intend to look at again, is a most shining 
Performance ! Not for a long while have I read anything tenth-part 
so radiant with talent, ingenuity, lambent fire (sheet — and other 
lightnings) of all commendable kinds ! Never was such a lecture on 
Crystallography before, had there been nothing else in it, — and there 
are all manner of things. In power of expression I pronounce it su- 

301 



302 THE RELIGION OF RUSK IN 

preme ; never did anybody who had such things to explain explain 
them better." 

The few selections here given must not be regarded as a fair 
sample of the interest which the book awakens. The charming per- 
sonality of the conversations can only be appreciated by reading 
them and the book is, fortunately, one of those reprints which can 
be purchased at any bookstore for a few cents. 

DIAMONDS AND GOLD DO NOT MAKE HAPPINESS. 

Was any woman, do you suppose, ever the better for possessing 
diamonds? but how many have been made base, frivolous, and mis- 
erable by desiring them? Was ever man the better for having cof- 
fers full of gold? but who shall measure the guilt that is incurred 
to fill them? Look into the history of any civilized nations; analyze, 
with reference to this one cause of crime and misery, the lives and 
thoughts of their nobles, priests, merchants, and men of luxurious 
life. Every other temptation is at last concentrated into this: pride, 
and lust, and envy, and anger all give up their strength to avarice. 
The sin of the whole world is essentially the sin of Judas. Men do 
not disbelieve their Christ; but they sell Him. — Lect I. 

RIGHT AND WRONG. 

May. Well, but if people do as well as they can see how, surely 
that is the right for them, isn't it? 

L. No, May, not a bit of it; right is right, and wrong is wrong. 
It is only the fool who does wrong, and says he "did it for the best." 
And if there's one sort of person in the world that the Bible speaks 
harder of than another, it is fools. Their particular and chief way 
of saying "There is no God" is this, of declaring that whatever their 
"public opinion" may be, is right: and that God's opinion is of no 
consequence. 

Mary. And if one is forced to do a wrong thing by some one who 
has authority over you? 

L. My dear, no one can be forced to do a wrong thing, for the 
guilt is in the will: but you may any day be forced to do a fatal 
thing, as you might be forced to take poison ; the remarkable law of 
nature in such cases being, that it is always unfortunate you who 
&re poisoned, and not the person who gives you the dose. It is a very 
strange law, but it ts a law. Nature merely sees to the carrying out 
of the normal operation of arsenic. She never troubles herself to 
ask who gave it you. So also you may be starved to death, morally 
as well as physically, by other people's faults. You are, on the 
whole, very good children sitting here to-day; do you think that 
your goodness comes all by your own contriving? or that you are 



RELIGIOUS STUDIES IN NATURE 303 

gentle and kind because your dispositions are naturally more angelic 
than those of the poor girls who are playing, with wild eyes, on the 
dust-heaps in the alleys of our great towns; and who will one day 
fill their prisons, — or, better, their graves? Heaven only knows 
where they, and we who have cast them there, shall stand at last. 
But the main judgment question will be, I suppose, for all of us, 
"Did you keep a good heart through it?" What you were, others 
may answer for; — what you tried to be, you must answer for your- 
self. Was the heart pure and true — tell us that? — Led. V. 

HEDGEHOG BIBLE READING. 

The way in which common people read their Bibles is just like the 
way that the old monks thought hedgehogs ate grapes. They rolled 
themselves (it was said), over and over, where the grapes lay on 
the ground. What fruit stuck to their spines, they carried off, and 
ate. So your hedgehoggy readers roll themselves over and over their 
Bibles, and declare that whatever sticks to their own spines is Scrip- 
ture, and that nothing else is. But you can only get the skins of 
the texts that way. If you want their juice, you must press them 
in cluster. Now, the clustered texts about the human heart, insist, 
as a body, not on any inherent corruption in all hearts, but on the 
terrific distinction between the bad and the good ones. "A good 
man, out of the good treasure of his heart, bringeth forth that which 
is good; and an evil man, out of the evil treasure, bringeth forth 
that which is evil." "They on the rock are they which, in an honest 
and good heart, having heard the word, keep it." "Delight thyself 
in the Lord, and He shall give thee the desires of thine heart." "The 
wicked have bent their bow, that they may privily shoot at him that 
is upright in heart." And so on; they are countless, to the same 
effect. And, for all of us, the question is not at all to ascertain how 
much or how little corruption there is in human nature; but to as- 
certain whether, out of all the mass of that nature, we are of the 
sheep or the goat breed; whether we are people of upright heart, 
being shot at, or people of crooked heart, shooting. And, of all the 
texts bearing on the subject, this, which is a quite simple and practi- 
cal order, is the one you have chiefly to hold in mind. "Keep thy 
heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life." — Led. V, 

HOW TO HELP GOD. 

There is but one way in which man can ever help God — that is, 
by letting God help him : and there is no way in which His name is 
more guiltily taken in vain, than by calling the abandonment of 
our own work, the performance of His. 

God is a kind Father. He sets us all in the places where He wishes 
us to be employed; and that employment is truly^ "our^ Father's 
business." He chooses work for every creature which will be de- 



304 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

lightful to them, if they do it simply and humbly. He gives us 
always strength enough, and sense enough, for what He wants us to 
do; if we either tire ourselves or puzzle ourselves, it is ourselves, it 
is our own fault. And we may always be sure, whatever we are do- 
ing, that we cannot be pleasing Him, if we are not happy ourselves. 
Now, away with you, children; and be as happy as you can. And 
when you cannot, at least don't plume yourself upon pouting. — 
Lect VI, 

ERROR IN HUMAN CREEDS. 

The more readily we admit the possibility of our own cher- 
ished convictions being mixed with error, the more vital and help- 
ful whatever is right in them will become: and no error is so con- 
clusively fatal as the idea that God will not allow vls to err, though 
He has allowed all other men to do so. There may be doubt of the 
meaning of other visions, but there is none respecting that of the 
dream of St. Peter; and you may trust the Rock of the Church's 
Foundation for true interpreting, where he learned from it that, 
"in every nation, he that feareth God and worketh righteousness, is 
accepted with Him." See that you understand what that righteous- 
ness means; and set hand to it stoutly: you will always nieasure your 
neighbors' creed kindly, in proportion to the substantial fruits of 
your own. Do not think you will ever get harm by striving to enter 
into the faith of others, and to sympathize, in imagination, with, 
the guiding principles of their lives. So only can you justly love 
them, or pity them, or praise. By the gracious efforts you will 
double, treble — nay, indefinitely multiply, at once the pleasure, the 
reverence, and the intelligence with which you read: and, believe 
me, it is wiser and holier, by the fire of your own faith, to kindle 
the ashes of expired religions, than to let your soul shiver and stum- 
ble among their graves, through the gathering darkness, and com- 
municable cold. — Lect. X. 



II 

THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 
Three Lectures. (1869.) 

These lectures bearing the respective titles of (I) Athena in the 
Heavens — On the Greek Myths of Storm; (II) Athena in the Earth; 
(III) Athena in the Heart; are mainly studies of Greek myths, but 
are characteristic of our Author in that they frequently travel into 
subjects of practical life, and of moral aspects of such questions as 
Capital, Labor, Legislation, Liberty, Land, Money, Crime, etc. 

Mr. Ruskin, himself, interprets his use of the Greek goddess Ath- 
ena. He says: — "This great goddess is physically, the queen of the air: 
having supreme power both over its blessing of calm, and wrath of 
storm, and spiritually, she is the queen of the breath of man, first 
of the bodily breathing which is life to his blood, and strength ta 
his arm in battle; and then of the mental breathing, or inspiration, 
which is his moral health and habitual wisdom ; wisdom of conduct 
and of the heart, as opposed to the wisdom of imagination and the 
brain ; moral, as distinct from intellectual ; inspired, as distinct from 
illuminated. 

By a singular, and fortunate, though I believe wholly accidental 
coincidence, the heart-virtue, of which she is the spirit, was separ- 
ated by the ancients into four divisions, which have since obtained 
acceptance from all men as rightly discerned, and have received, as 
if from the quarters of the four winds of which Athena is the natural 
queen, the name of 'Cardinal' virtues; namely. Prudence, (the right 
seeing, and foreseeing, of events through darkness) ; Justice, (the 
righteous bestowal of favour and of indignation) ; Fortitude, (pa- 
tience under trial by pain) ; and Temperance, (patience under trial 
by pleasure) .".... 

The Greek creed was, of course, different in its character, as our 
own creed is, according to the class of persons who held it. The 
common people's was quite literal, simple, and happy; their idea of 
Athena was as clear as a good Roman Catholic peasant's idea of the 
Madonna. In Athens itself, the centre of thought and refinement, 

30s 



3o6 TEE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

Pisistratus obtained the reins of government through the ready be- 
lief of the populace that a beautiful woman, armed like Athena, was 
the goddess herself. Even at the close of the last century some of 
this simplicity remained among the inhabitants of the Greek islands ; 
and when a pretty English lady first made her way into the grotto 
of Antiparos, she was surrounded, on her return, by all the women 
of the neighboring village, believing her to be divine, and praying 
her to heal them of their sicknesses. 

ART-GIFTS AND MORAL CHARACTER. 

107. The art-gift itself is only the result of the moral character 
of generations. A bad woman may have a sweet voice; but that 
sweetness of voice comes of the past morality of her race. That she 
can sing with it at all, she owes to the determination of laws of 
music by the morality of the past. Every act, every impulse, of 
virtue and vice, affects in any creature, face, voice, nervous power, 
and vigour and harmony of invention, at once. Perseverance in 
riglitness of human conduct, renders, after a certain number of gen- 
erations, human art possible ; every sin clouds it, be it ever so little 
a one ; and persistent vicious living and following of pleasure render, 
after a certain number of generations, all art impossible. Men are 
deceived by the long-suffering of the laws of nature; and mistake, 
in a nation, the reward of the virtue of its sires for the issue of its 
own sins. The time of their visitation will come, and that in- 
evitably; for, it is always true, that if the fathers have eaten sour 
grapes, the children's teeth are set on edge. And for the individual, 
as soon as you have learned to read, you may, as I said, know him 
to the heart's core, through his art. Let his art-gift be never so 
great, and cultivated to the height by the schools of a great race of 
men; and it is still but a tapestry thrown over his own being and 
inner soul; and the bearing of it will show, infallibly, whether it 
hangs on a man, or on a skeleton. If you are dim-eyed, you may 
not see the difference in the fall of the folds at first, but learn how 
to look, and the folds themselves will become transparent, and you 
shall see through them the death's shape, or the divine one, making 
the tissue above it as a cloud of light, or as a winding-sheet. — Led, 

MORAL DEEDS AFFECT OUR POWER FOR GOOD, 

111. As T myself look at it, there is no fault nor folly of my life, — 
and both have been many and great, — that does not rise up against 
me, and take away my joy, and shorten my power of possession, of 
sight, of understanding. And every past effort of my life, every gleam 
of rightness or good in it, is with me now, to help me in my grasp 
of this art, and its vision. So far as I can rejoice in, or interpret 



RELIGIOUS STUDIES IN NATURE 307 

either, my power is owing to what of right there is in me. I dare 
to say it, that, because through all my life I have desired good, and 
not evil ; because I have been kind to many ; have wished to be kind 
to all; have wilfully injured none; and because I have loved much, 
and not selfishly ; — therefore, the morning light is yet visible to me 
on those hills, and you, who read, may trust my thought and word 
in such work as I have to do for you; and you will be glad after- 
wards that you have trusted them. — Led. III. 

ABSOLUTE FREEDOM ONLY IN DEATH. 

Death is the only real freedom possible to us; and that is con- 
summate freedom, — permission for every particle in the rotting 
body to leave its neighbor particle, and shift for itself. You call 
it "corruption" in the flesh; but before it comes to that, all liberty 
is an equal corruption in mind. You ask for freedom of thought; 
but if you have not sufficient grounds for thought, you have no 
business to think, and if you have sufficient grounds, you have no 
business to think wrong. Only one thought is possible to you, if 
you are wise — your liberty is geometrically proportionate to your 
folly. 

FREEDOM ONLY WITH RESTRICTIONS. 

154. "But all this glory and activity of our age; what are they 
owing to, but to our freedom of thought?" In a measure they are 
owing — what good is in them — to the discovery of many lies, and 
the escape from the power of evil. Not to liberty, but to the deliver- 
ance from evil or cruel masters. Brave men have dared to examine 
lies which had long been taught, not because they were /ree-thinkers 
but because they were such stern and close thinkers that the lie could 
no longer escape them. Of course the restriction of thought, or of 
its expression, by persecution, is merely a form of violence, justi- 
fiable or not, as other violence is, according to the character of the 
persons against whom it is exercised, and the divine and eternal 
laws which it vindicates or violates. We must not burn a man alive 
for saying that the Athanasian creed is ungrammatical, nor stop a 
bishop's salary because we are getting the worst of an argument with 
him ; neither must we let drunken men howl in the public streets at 
night. The liberty of expression, with a great nation, would be- 
come like that in a well-educated company, in which there is indeed 
freedom of speech, but not of clamour; or like that in an orderly 
senate, in which men who deserve to be heard, are heard in due time, 
and under determined restrictions. The degree of liberty you caa 
rightly grant to a number of men is in the inverse ratio of their 
desire for it ; and a general hush, or call to order, would be often very 
desirable. — Led. III. 



Ill 

LOVE'S MEINIE. 
Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds. (1873.) 

These lectures were a part of a Course designed to be much ex- 
tended, and to form an important volume of study on the Artist- 
view of birds. Mr. Ruskin seems to have had a presentiment that 
he would never be able to complete the task, for in closing his lec- 
tures he remarked: — "It has been throughout my trust that if death 
should write on these, 'What this man began to build, he was not 
able to finish,' God may also write on them, not in anger, but in aid, 
*A stronger than he cometh.' "^ 

He says "Love's Meinie (Love's Many or Serving Company) was 
meant to become a study of British birds, which would have been 
useful in museums." 

The lectures were attended by crowds of people, attracted by the 
well-known ability of the lecturer to deal thoroughly with such 
subjects. Every lover of Natural History should read these two lec- 
tures, a glimpse of which is given in the following selected para- 
graphs : 

CHRISTIAN POETS AND SONG-BIRDS. 

38. And as soon as the Christian poets begin to speak of the sing- 
ing of the birds, they show themselves in quite a different mood 
from any that ever occurs to a Greek. Aristophanes, with infinitely 
more skill, describes, and partly imitates, the singing of the nightin- 
gale; but simply as beautiful sound. . . . But this troubadour 
finds his heart in heaven by the power of the singing only. . . . 
in English, we could only express the meaning in some such fash- 
ion as this: 

They perfected all their service of Love, 

These maiden birds that I tell you of. 

They sang such a song, so finished-fair, 

As if they were angels, born of the air. 

KNOW THE THINGS OF NATURE. 

79. If you are not inclined to look at the wings of birds, which 
God has given you to handle and to see, much less are you to con- 

* CJoUingwood. 

308 



RELIGIOUS STUDIES IN NATURE 309 

template, or draw imaginations of, the wings of angels, which you 
can't see. Know your own world first — not denying any other, but 
being quite sure that the place in which you are now put is the 
place with which you are now concerned; and that it will be wiser 
in you to think the gods themselves may appear in the form of a 
dove or a swallow, than that, by false theft from the form of 
dove or swallow, you can represent the aspect of gods. 

THE SWALLOW. 

80. I believe I have been able to put before you some means of 
guidance to understand the beauty of the bird which lives with you 
in your own houses, and which purifies for you, from its insect 
pestilence, the air that you breathe. Thus the sweet domestic thing 
has done, for men, at least these four thousand years. She has been 
their companion, not of the home merely, but of the hearth, and the 
threshold; companion only endeared by departure, and showing 
better her loving-kindness by her faithful return. Type sometimes 
of the stranger, she has softened us to hospitality; type always of 
the suppliant, she has enchanted us to mercy; and in her feeble 
presence, the cowardice, or the wrath, of sacrilege has changed into 
the fidelities of sanctuary. Herald of our summer, she glances 
through our days of gladness; numberer of our years, she would 
teach us to apply our hearts to wisdom; — and yet, so little have we 
regarded her, that this very day, scarcely able to gather from all I 
can find told of her enough to explain so much as the unfolding of 
her wings, I can tell you nothing of her life — nothing of her jour- 
neying: I cannot learn how she builds, nor how she chooses the 
place of her wandering, nor how she traces the path of her return. 
Remaining thus blind and careless to the true ministries of the 
humble creature whom God has really sent to serve us, we in our 
pride, thinking ourselves surrounded by the pursuivants of the sky, 
can yet only invest them with majesty by giving them the calm of 
the bird's motion, and shade of the bird's plume: — and after all, it 
is well for us, if, when even for God's best mercies, and in His tem- 
ples marble-built, we think that, "with angels and archangels, and 
all the company of Heaven, we laud and magnify His glorious 
name" — well for us, if our attempt be not only an insult, and His 
ears open rather to the inarticulate and unintended praise, of "the 
Swallow, twittering from her straw-built shed." 



IV 

DEUCALION. 

Collected Studies op Waves and Stones. (2 Vols. 1875.) 

Vol. I. 14 Chaps. Vol. II. 3 Chaps. 

Classic Literature records a Greek Legend of "a great flood" in 
which the whole inhabited world was destroyed, except Deucalion 
and his wife Pyrrha, who saved themselves. After consulting an 
Oracle they threw behind them stones of the earth; from those 
thrown by Deucalion sprang men, and from those thrown by Pyrrha 
came women. These were called the "Stone race." 

This legend seems to have suggested to Ruskin the title of this 
volume which treats of stones and waves. The work involved in 
the volume was prosecuted at the same time as that of Proserpina and 
was a parallel study. The two works should go together and one 
wonders why, in the American editions they are entirely separated. 

In his preface to this collection of studies Ruskin says : — 

"It chanced, this morning, as I sat down to finish my preface, that 
I had, for my introductory reading, the fifth chapter of the second 
book of Esdras ; in which, though often read carefully before, I had 
never enough noticed the curiousverse, "Blood shall drop out of wood, 
and the stone shall give his voice, and the people shall be troubled." 
Of which verse, so far as I can gather the meaning from the context", 
and from the rest of the chapter, the intent is, that in the time 
spoken of by the prophet, which, if not our own, is one exactly cor- 
responding to it, the deadness of men to all noble things shall be so 
great, that the sap of trees shall be more truly blood, in God's sight, 
than their hearts' blood; and the silence of men, in praise of all 
noble things, so great, that the stones shall cry out, in God's hear- 
ing, instead of their tongues ; and the rattling of the shingle on the 
beach, and the roar of the rocks driven by the torrent, be truer Te 
Deum than the thunder of all their choirs. The writings of modern 
scientific prophets teach us to anticipate a day when even these 
lower voices shall be also silent ; and leaf cease to wave, and stream 

310 



RELIGIOUS STUDIES IN NATURE 311 

to murmur, in the grasp of an eternal cold. But it may be, that 
rather out of the mouths of babies and sucklings a better peace may 
be promised to the redeemed Jerusalem ; and the strewn branches, 
and low-laid stones, remain at rest at the gates of the city, built in 
unity with herself, and saying with her human voice, "My King 
cometh . ' ' — Intro due tion. 

THE earth's three ERAS. 

4. There are, broadly, three great demonstrable periods of the 
Earth's history. That in which it was crystallized ; that in which it 
was sculptured; and that in which it is now being unsculptured, or 
deformed. These liirce periods interlace with each other, and grad- 
ate into each other — as the periods of human life do. Something 
dies in the child on the day that it is born, — something is born in the 
man on the day that he dies : nevertheless, his life is broadly divided 
into youth, strength, and decrepitude. In such clear sense, the 
Earth has its three ages : of their length we know as yet nothing, ex- 
cept that it has been greater than any man had imagined. 

7. (THE FIRST PERIOD.)— But there \yas a period, or a suc- 
cession of periods, during which the rocks which are now hard were 
soft; and in which, out of entirely different positions, and under en- 
tirely different conditions from any now existing or describable, the 
masses, of which the mountains you now see are made, were lifted, 
and hardened, in the positions they now occupy, though in what 
forms we can now no more guess than we can the original outline 
of the block from the existing statute. 

8. (THE SECOND PERIOD.)— Then, out of those raised 
masses, more or less in lines compliant with their crystalline struc- 
ture, the mountains we now see were hewn, or worn, during the sec- 
ond period, by forces for the most part differing both in mode and 
violence from any now in operation, but the result of which was to 
bring the surface of the earth into a form approximately that which 
it has possessed as far as the records of human history extend. — 
The Ararat of Moses's time, the Olympus and Ida of Homer's, are 
practically the same mountains now, that they were then. 

9. (THE THIRD PERIOD.)— Not, however, without some cal- 
culable, though superficial, change, and that change, one of steady 
degradation. For in the third, or historical period, the valleys ex- 
cavated in the second period are being filled up, and the mountains, 
hewn in the second period, worn or ruined down. In the second 
era the valley of the Rhone was being cut deeper every day; now 
it is every day being filled up with gravel. In the second era, the 
scars of Derbyshire and Yorkshire were cut white and steep; now 
they are being darkened by vegetation, and crumbled by frost. You 
cannot, I repeat, separate the periods with precision; but, in their 
characters, they are as distinct as youth from age. — Ch. II. 



312 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN} 

PRECIOUS STONES. 

10. Finding in its past history that in its pure and loyal forms, 
of amethyst, opal, crystal, jasper, and onyx, it also has been much 
beloved of men, shall we not ask farther whether it deserves to be 
beloved, — whether in wisdom or folly, equity or inequity, we give 
our affections to glittering shapes of clay, and found our fortunes 
on fortitudes of stone; and carry down from lip to lip, and teach, 
the father to the child, as a sacred tradition, that the Power which 
made us, and preserves, gave also with the leaves of the earth for our 
food, and the streams of the earth for our thirst, so also the dust 
of the earth for our delight and possession : bidding the first of the 
Rivers of Paradise roll stainless waves over radiant sands, and writ- 
ing, by the word of the Spirit, of the Rocks that it divided, "The 
gold of that land is good; there also is the crystal, and the onyx 
stone." 

11. Before I go on, I must justify to you the familiar word I 
have used for the rare one in the text. 

If with mere curiosity, or ambitious scholarship, you were to read 
the commentators on the Pentateuch, you might spend, literally, 
many years of life, on the discussions as to the kinds of the gems 
named in it ; and be no wiser at the end than you were at the begin- 
ning. But if, honestly and earnestly desiring to know the meaning of 
the book itself, you set yourself to read with such ordinary help as 
a good concordance and dictionary, and with fair knowledge of the 
two languages in which the Testaments have been clearly given to 
us, you may find out all you need know, in an hour. — Ch. VII. 

THE DEW AND THE HOAR FROST. 

12. The word "bdellium" occurs only twice in the Old Testament: 
here, and in the book of Numbers, where you are told the manna 
was of the colour or look of bdellium. There, the Septuagint uses 
for it the word Kpv(TTaXXo<;, crystal, or more properly anything con- 
gealed by cold ; and in the other account of the manna, in Exodus, 
you are told that, after the dew round the camp was gone up, "there 
lay a small round thing — as small as the hoar-frost upon the 
ground." Until I heard from my friend Mr. Tyrrwhitt of the cold 
felt at night in camping on Sinai, I could not understand how deep 
the feeling of the Arab, no less than the Greek, must have been re- 
specting the divine gift of the dew, — nor with what sense of thank- 
fulness for miraculous blessing the question of Job would be uttered, 
"The hoary frost of heaven, who hath gendered it?" Then compare 
the first words of the blessing of Isaac: "God give thee of the dew 
of heaven, and of the fatness of earth ;" and, again, the first words 
of the song of Moses : "Give ear, oh ye heavens, — for my speech 
shall distil as the dew;" and you will see at once w^hy this heavenly 
food was made to shine clear in the desert, like an enduring of its 



RELIGIOUS STUDIES IN NATURE 313 

clew ; — Divine remaining for continual need. Frozen, as the Alpine 
snow — pure for ever. — Ch. VII. 

THE MANNA. 

13. Seize firmly that first idea of the manna, as the type of the 
bread which is the Word of God ; and then look on for the English 
word "crystal" in Job, of Wisdom, "It cannot be valued with the 
gold of Ophir, with the precious onyx, or the sapphire : the gold and 
the crystal shall not equal it, neither shall it be valued with pure 
gold;" in Ezekiel, "firmament of the terrible crystal," or in the 
Apocalypse, "A sea of glass, like unto crystal, — water of life, clear 
as crystal," — "light of the city like a stone most precious, even 
like a jasper stone, clear as crystal." Your understanding the true 
meaning of all these passages depends on your distinct conception 
of the permanent clearness and hardness of the Rock-crystal. — Ch. 
VIL 

14. The three substances named here in the first account of Para- 
dise, stand generally as types — the Gold of all precious metals; the 
Crystal of all clear precious stones prized for lustre; and the Onyx 
of all opaque precious stones prized for colour. And to mark this 
distinction as a vital one, — in each case when the stones to be set for 
the tabernacle-service are named, the onyx is named separately. The 
Jewish rulers brought "onyx stones, and stones to be set for the 
ephod, and for the breastplate."^ And the onyx is used thrice, while 
every other stone is used only once, in the High Priest's robe; two 
onyxes on the shoulders, bearing the twelve names of the tribes, six 
on each stone, (Exod. xxviii. 9, 10,) and one in the breastplate, 
with its separate name of one tribe, (Exod. xxviii. 20.) 

15. A. Now note the importance of this grouping. The Gold, or 
precious metal, is significant of all that the power of the beautiful 
earth, gold, and of the strong earth, iron, has done for and against 
man. How much evil I need not say. How much good is a ques- 
tion I will endeavor to show some evidence on forthwith. 

B. The Crystal is significant of all the power that jewels, from 
diamonds down through every Indian gem to the glass beads which 
we now make for ball-dresses, have had over the imagination and 
economy of men and women — from the day that Adam drank of 
the water of the crystal river to this hour. How much evil this is, 
you partially know; how much good, we have to consider. 

c. The Onyx is the type of all stones arranged in bands of different 
colors; it means primarily, nail-stone — showing a separation like the 
white half-crescent at the root of the finger-nail; not without some 
idea of its subjection to the laws of life. Of these stones, part which 
are flinty, are the material used for cameos and all manner of en- 

1 Exod. XXV. 7, XXXV. 27, comparing Job above quoted, and Ezekiel xxviii, 13. 



314 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

graved work. . . . This stone, as best representative of all oth- 
ers, is chosen to be the last gift of men to Christ, as gold is their 
first ; incense with both : at His birth, gold and frankincense ; at His 
death, alabaster and spikenard. — Ch. VII. 

WHY LOVE PRECIOUS STONES? 

41. I return to our question at the beginning: Are we right in 
setting our hearts on these stones, — loving them, holding them 
precious? 

Yes, assuredly ; provided it is the stone we love, and the stone we 
think precious; and not ourselves we love, and ourselves we think 
precious. To worship a black stone, because it fell from heaven, 
may not be wholly wise, but it is half-way to being wise ; half-way to 
worship of heaven itself. Or, to worship a white stone because it is 
dug with difficulty out of the earth, and to put it into a log of wood, 
and say the wood sees with it, may not be wholly wise ; but it is half- 
way to being wise; half-way to believing that the God who makes 
earth so bright, may also brighten the eyes of the blind. It is no 
true folly to think that stones see, but it is, to think that eyes do not ; 
it is no true folly to think that stones live, but it is, to think that 
souls die ; it is no true folly to believe that, in the day of the making 
up of jewels, the palace walls shall be compact of life above their 
corner-stone, — but it is, to believe that in the day of dissolution the 
souls of the globe shall be shattered with its emerald ; and no spirit 
survive, unterrified, above the ruin. 

42. Yes, pretty ladies ! love the stones, and take care of them ; but 
love your own souls better, and take care of them, for the day when 
the Master shall make up His jewels. See that it be first the precious 
stones of the breastplate of justice you delight in, and are brave in; 
not first the stones of your own diamond necklaces you delight in, 
and are fearful for, lest perchance the lady's maid miss that box at 
the station. Get your breastplate of truth first, and every earthly 
stone will shine in it. 

Alas ! most of you know no more what justice means, than what 
jewels mean ; but here is the pure practice of it to be begun, if you 
will, to-morrow. 

JEWELS. 

43. For literal truth of your jewels themselves, absolutely search 
out and cast away all manner of false, or dyed, or altered stones. 
And at present, to make quite sure, wear your jewels uncut: they 
will be twenty times more interesting to you, so. The ruby in the 
British crown is uncut; and is, as far as my knowledge extends, — 
I have not had it to look at close, — the loveliest precious stone in 
the world. And, as a piece of true gentlewoman's and true lady's 
knowledge, learn to know these stones when you see them, uncut. 



RELIGIOUS STUDIES IN NATURE 315 

So much of mineralogy the abundance of modern science may, I 
think, spare, as a piece of required education for the upper classes. 

JEWELS OP GOD. 

45. And lastly, as you are true in the choosing, be just in the 
sharing, of your jewels. They are but dross and dust after all; and 
you, my sweet religious friends, who are so anxious to impart to the 
poor your pearls of great price, may surely also share with then} 
your pearls of little price. Strangely (to my own mind at least), 
you are not so zealous in distributing your estimable rubies, as you 
are in communicating your inestimable wisdom. Of the grace of 
God, which you can give away in the quantity you think others are 
in need of, without losing any yourselves, I observe you to be affec- 
tionately lavish ; but of the jewels of God, if any suggestions be made 
by charity touching the distribution of them, you are apt, in your 
wisdom, to make answer like the wise virgins, "Not so, lest there be 
not enough for us and you." 

THE TABERNACLE OF GOD. 

46. The tabernacle of God is now with men; — in men, and wo- 
men, and sucklings also; which temple ye are, ye and your Chris- 
tian sisters ; of whom the poorest, here in London, are a very undec- 
orated shrine indeed. They are the Tabernacle, fair friends, which 
you have got leave, and charge, to adorn. Not, in anywise, those 
charming churches and altars which you wreathe with garlands for 
God's sake, and the eloquent clergyman's. You are quite wrong, 
and barbarous in language, when you call them "Churches" at all. 
They are only Synagogues; — the very same of which Christ spoke, 
with eternal meaning, as the places that hypocrites would love to 
be seen in. . . . You are yourselves the Church, dears; and 
see that you be finally adorned, as women professing godliness, with 
the precious stones of good works, which may be quite briefly de- 
fined, for the present, as decorating the entire Tabernacle; and 
clothing your poor sisters, with yourselves. Put roses also in their 
hair, put precious stones also on their breasts ; see that they also are 
clothed in your purple and scarlet, with other delights; that they 
also learn to read the gilded heraldry of the sky; and, upon the 
earth, be taught, not only the labours of it, but the loveliness. For 
them, also, let the hereditary jewel recall their father's pride, their 
mother's beauty : so shall your days, and theirs, be long in the sweet 
and sacred land which the Lord your God has given you : so, truly, 

shall THE GOLD OF THAT LAND BE GOOD, AND THERE, ALSO, THE CRYS- 
TAL, AND THE ONYX STONE. Ch. VII. 



3i6 TEE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

children's guardian angels. 

87. Those parents who love their children most tenderly, can- 
not but sometimes dwell on the old Christian fancy, that they have 
iguardian angels. I call it an old fancy, in deference to your mod- 
ern enlightenment in religion; but I assure you nevertheless, in 
epite of all that illumination, there remains yet some dark possibil- 
ity that the old fancy may be true: and that, although the modern 
apothecary cannot exhibit to you either an angel, or an imp, in a 
bottle, the spiritual powers of heaven and hell are no less now, than 
heretofore, contending for the souls of your children ; and contend- 
ing with you — -for the privilege of their tutorship. 

DEVXLS and angels CONTEND FOR CHILDREN. 

38. Forgive me if I use, for the few minutes I have yet to speak 
to you, the andent language, — metaphorical, if you will, of Luther 
and Fenelon, of Dante and Milton, of Goethe and Shakspeare, of 
St. John and 8t. Paul, rather than your modern metaphysical or 
scientific slang: and if I tell you, what in the issue of it you will find 
is either life-giving, or deadly, fact, — that the fiends and the angels 
contend with you daily for the spirits of your children: the devil 
using to you his old, his hitherto immortal, bribes, of lust and pride ; 
and the angels pleading with you, still, that they may be allowed to 
lead your bribes in the divine life of the pure and the lowly. To 
enrage their lusts, and chiefly the vilest lust of money, the devils 
would drag them to the classes that teach them how to get on 
in the wor.d; and for the better pluming of their pride, provoke 
their zeal ^n the sciences which will assure them of their being no 
God in n/iture but the gas of their own graves. 

And of these powers you may discern the one from the other by 
a vivid, instant, practical test. The devils always will exhibit to 
you what is loathsome, ugly, and, above all, dead; and the angels, 
"What is pure, beautiful, and, above all, living. — Ch. XII. 

THE SLOTH. 

39. Take an actual, literal instance. Of all known quadrupeds, 
the unhappiest and vilest, yet alive, is the sloth, having this farther 
strange devilry in him, that what activity he is capable of, is in 
storm, and in the night. Well, the devil takes up this creature, and 
makes a monster of it, — gives it legs as big as hogsheads, claws 
stretched like the roots of a tree, shoulders like a hump of crag, and 
a skull as thick as a paving-stone. From this nightmare monster he 
takes what poor faculty of motion the creature, though wretched, 
has in its minuter size; and shows you, instead of the clinging 
climber that scratched and scrambled from branch to branch among 
the rattling trees as they bowed in storm, only a vast heap of stony 



RELIGIOUS STUDIES IN NATURE 317 

bones and staggering clay, that drags its meat down to its mouth out 
of the forest ruin. This creature the fiends delight to exhibit to you, 
but are permitted by the nobler powers only to exhibit to you in its 
death.— C;i. XIL 

THE SQUIRREL. 

40. On the other hand, as of all quadrupeds there is none so 
ugly or so miserable as the sloth, so, take him for all in all, there 
is none so beautiful, so happy, so wonderful as the squirrel. Inno- 
cent in all his ways, harmless in his food, playful as a kitten, but 
without cruelty, and surpassing the fantastic dexterity of the mon- 
key, with the grace and the brightness of a bird, the little dark- 
eyed miracle of the forest glances from branch to branch more like 
a sunbeam than a living creature: it leaps, and darts, and twines, 
where it will ; — a chamois is slow to it ; and a panther, clumsy : gro- 
tesque as a gnome, gentle as a fairy, delicate as the silken plumes 
of the rush, beautiful and strong like the spiral of a fern, — it haunts 
you, listens for you, hides from you, looks for you, loves you, as if 
the angel that walks with your children had made it himself for 
their heavenly plaything. — Ch. XII. 

TRUE SCIENCE BEGINS AND ENDS IN LOVE. 

And this is what you do, to thwart alike your child's angel, and 
his God, — you take him out of the woods into the town, — you send 
him from modest labour to competitive schooling, — you force him 
out of the fresh air into the dusty bonehouse, — you show him the 
skeleton of the dead monster, and make him pore over its rotten 
cells and wire-stitched joints, and vile extinct capacities of destruc- 
tion, — and when he is choked and sickened with useless horror and 
putrid air, you let him — regretting the waste of time — go out for 
once to play again by the woodside; — and the first squirrel he sees, 
he throws a stone at! 

Carry, then, I beseech you, this assured truth away with you to- 
night. All true science begins in the love, not the dissection, of 
your fellow-creatures; and it ends in the love, not the analysis, of 
God. Your alphabet of science is in the nearest knowledge, as your 
alphabet of science is in the nearest duty. "Behold, it is nigh thee, 
even at the doors." The Spirit of God is around you in the air that 
you breathe, — His glory in the light that you see; and in the fruit- 
fulness of the earth, and the joy of its creatures, He has written 
for you, day by day. His revelation, as He has granted you, day by 
day, your daily bread. — Ch. XII. 

LOOK FOR LITERAL MEANING OF THE BIBLE. 

48. In any good book, but especially in the Bible, you must al- 
ways look for the literal meaning of everything first, — and act out 



3i8 TEE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

that, then the spiritual meaning easily and securely follows. Now 
in the great Song of Moses, in which he foretells, before his death, 
the corruption of Israel, he says of the wicked race into which the 
Holy People are to change, "Their wine is the poison of dragons, 
and the cruel venom of asps." Their wine, — that is to say, of course, 
not the wine they drink, but the wine they give to drink. So that, 
as our best duty to our neighbor is figured by the Samaritan who 
heals wounds by pouring in oil and wine, our worst sin against our 
neighbour is in envenoming his wounds by pouring in gall and 
poison. The cruel venom of Asps — of that brown gentleman you 
see there I 

SALOON AS PROP OF COLLEGE. 

53. I know a village, some few miles from Oxford, numbering 
of inhabitants some four hundred louts, in which my own College 
of the Body of Christ keeps the public-house, and therein sells — by 
its deputy — such poisoned beer that the Rector's wife told me, only 
the day before yesterday, that she sent for some to take out a stain 
in a dress with, and couldn't touch the dress with it, it was so filthy 
with salt and acid, to provoke thirst ; and that while the public-house 
was there she had no hope of doing any good to the men, who al- 
ways prepared for Sunday by a fight on Saturday night. And that 
my own very good friend the Bursar, and we the Fellows, of Corpus, 
being appealed to again and again to shut up that tavern, the an- 
swer is always, "The College can't afford it: we can't give up that 
fifty pounds a year out of those peasant sots' pockets, and yet 'as a 
College' live." 

Drive that nail home with your hammers, for I've no more time ; 
and consider the significance of the fact, that the gentlemen of Eng- 
land can't afford to keep up a college for their own sons but by 
selling death of body and soul to their own peasantry. 

WISDOM OF SERPENT. 

55. "What the best wisdom of the Serpent may be, I assume that 
you all possess; — and my caution is to be addressed to you in that 
brightly serpentine perfection. In all other respects as wise, in one 
respect let me beg you to be wiser than the Serpent, and not to eat 
your meat without tasting it, — meat of any sort, but above all the 
serpent-recommended meat of knowledge. Think what a delicate 
and delightful meat that used to be in old days, when it was not 
quite so common as it is now, and when young people — the best 
sort of them — really hungered and thirsted for it. Then a youth 
went up to Cambridge, or Padua, or Bonn, as to a feast of fat things, 
of wines on the lees, well-refined. But now, he goes only to swallow, 
— and, more's the pity, not even to swallow as a glutton does, with 
enjoyment; not even — forgive me the old Aristotelian Greek, 



RELIGIOUS STUDIES IN NATURE 319 

lySo/tcvos tt; atf}r] — pleased with the going down, but in the saddest and 
exactest way, as a constrictor does, tasting nothing all the time. You 
remember what Professor Huxley told you — most interesting it was, 
and new to me — of the way the great boa does not in any true sense 
swallow, but only hitches himself on to his meat like a coalsack ; — 
well, that's the exact way you expect your poor modern student to 
hitch himself on to his meat, catching and notching his teeth into 
it, and dragging the skin of him tight over it, — till at last — you 
know I told you a little while a^o our artists didn't know a snake 
from a sausage, — but. Heaven help us, your University doctors are 
going on at sucji a rate that it will be all we can do, soon, to know 
a man from a sausage. — Vol. II, Ch. 1. 



RECTITUDE AND HONOR. 

56. How often do I receive letters from young men of sense and 
genius, lamenting the loss of their strength, and waste of their time, 
but ending always with the same saying, *'I must take as high a class 
as I can, in order to please my father." And the fathers love the 
lads all the time, but yet, in every word they speak to them, prick 
the poison of the asp into their young blood, and sicken their eyes 
with blindness to all the true joys, the true aims, and the true praises 
of science and literature; neither do they themselves any more con- 
ceive that the only path of honour is that of rectitude, and the only 
place of honour, the one that you are fit for. Make your children 
happy in their youth; let distinction come to them, if it will, after 
well-spent and well-remembered years ; but let them now break and 
eat the bread of Heaven with gladness and singleness of heart, and 
send portions to them for whom nothing is prepared; — and so 
Heaven send you its grace — before meat, and after it. — Vol. II, 
Ch. 1. 



PROSERPINA. 

Studies of Wayside Flowers, Etc. (2 Vols. 1876.) 

Vol. I. 14 Ohaps. Vol. II. 9 Chaps. 

From Greek mythology we learn of a goddess Proserpma, who is 
said to have presided over the blade of corn when it sprouted forth 
from the etarth, and without whom, when, one year, she was taken 
away, not a blade of corn grew on the earth. 

From this myth Ruskin has taken the name for a volume devoted, 
not strictly to Botany, but to a beautiful and poetic presentation of 
the mystery of growth in plants. The work is finely illustrated with 
engravings by the Author's friends, Burgess and Allen. 

Let the reader take notice of the mere titles of the chapters and he 
will see with what thoroughness and breadth of view the subject is 
treated. Here are the titles of the chapters of Vol. I. The Root, 
The Leaf, The Flower, The Stem— Outside and In, The Bark, Gen- 
ealogy, The Seed and the Husk, The Fruit Gift. 

This work was the product of years of study ; at least, of so much 
of those years, as Ruskin could give to it, in the midst of his many 
other active labors. Like all the rest, too, it was profoundly true to 
morals and religion. The work appeals strongly to lovers of plant 
and tree life, while it furnishes many an illustration of the lofty; 
thought and spiritual mind of the writer. 

ROOTS. 

THEIR ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS. 

3. The Root has three great functions: 
1st. To hold the plant in its place. 
2nd. To nourish it with earth. 
8rd. To receive vital power for it from the earth. 
With this last office is, in some degree, — and especially in certain 
plants, — connected, that of reproduction. 

But in all plants the root has these three essential functions. 

320 



RELIGIOUS STUDIES IN NATURE 321 

10. But the root has, it seems to me, one more function, the most 
important of all. 

There are some plants which appear to derive all their food from 
the air — which need nothing but a slight grasp of the ground to 
fix them in their place. Yet if we were to tie them into that place, 
in a framework, and cut them from their roots, they would die. 
Not only in these, but in all other plants, the vital power by which 
they shape and feed themselves, whatever that power may be, de- 
pends, I think, on that slight touch of the earth, and strange in- 
heritance of its power. It is as essential to the plant's life as the 
connection of the head of an animal with its body by the spine is 
to the animal. Divide the feeble nervous thread, and all life ceases. 
Nay, in the tree the root is even of greater importance. You will 
not kill the tree, as you would an animal, by dividing its body or 
trunk. The part not severed from the root will shoot again. But 
in the root, and its touch of the ground, is the life of it. — Vol. Z, 

LIFE A DELIGHT — DEATH, DREADFUL. 

11. What vital power is, men of science are not a step nearer 
knowing than they were four thousand, years ago. They are, if 
anything, farther from knowing now than then, in that they im- 
agine themselves nearer. But they know more about its limitations 
and manifestations than they did. They have even arrived at some- 
thing like a proof that there is a fixed quantity of it flowing out of 
things and into them. But, for the present, rest content with the 
general and sure knowledge that, fixed or flowing, measurable or im- 
measurable — one with electricity or heat or light, or quite distinct 
from any of them — life is a delightful, and its negative, death, a 
dreadful thing, to human creatures ; and that you can give or gather 
a certain quantity of life into plants, animals, and yourself by wis- 
dom and courage, and by their reverses can bring upon them any 
quantity of death you please, which is a much more serious point 
for you to consider than what life and death are. — Vol. I, Ch. 2. 



A LESSON FROM ROOTS. 

13. There is a pretty example of patience for us in this ; and it 
would be well for young people generally to set themselves to grow 
in a carrotty or turnippy manner, and lay up secret store, not caring 
to exhibit it until the time comes for fruitful display. But they must 
not, in after-life, imitate the spendthrift vegetable, and blossom only 
in the strength of what they learned long ago ; else they soon come 
to contemptible end. Wise people live like laurels and cedars, and 
go on mining in the eaHh, while they adorn and embalm the air. — 
Vol. I, Ch. 2. 



322 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

THE LEAF. 

ITS MINISTRY. 

1. "He shall be like a tree planted by the river side, that bears 
its fruit in its season. His leaf also shall not wither; and you will 
see that whatever he does will prosper." 

It will be easy for you to recollect the two eastern figures under 
which the happiness of the man is represented, — that he is like a 
tree bearing fruit "in its season;" (not so hastily as that the frost 
pinch it, nor so late that no sun ripens it;) and that "his leaf shall 
not fade." I should like you to recollect this phrase in the Vulgate — 
"folium ejus non defluet" — shall not fall away, — that is to say, shall 
not fall so as to leave any visible bareness in winter time, but only 
that others may come up in its place, and the tree be always green. 
—Vol. I, Ch. 3. 

LEAVES AND FRUIT. 

2. Now, you know, the fruit of the tree is either for the continu- 
ance of its race, or for the good, or harm, of other creatures. In no 
case is it a good to the tree itself. It is not indeed, properly, a part 
of the tree at all, any more than the egg is part of the bird, or the 
young of any creature part of the creature itself. But in the leaf is 
the strength of the tree itself. Nay, rightly speaking, the leaves are 
the tree itself. Its trunk sustains; its fruit burdens and exhausts; 
but in the leaf it breathes and lives. And thus also, in the eastern 
symbolism, the fruit is the labor of men for others; but the leaf is 
their own life. "He shall bring forth fruit, in his time; and his 
own joy and strength shall be continual." — Vol. I, Ch. 3. 

LESSONS OF THE BRANCH. 

6. Now gather a branch of laurel, and look at it carefully. You 
may read the history of the being of half the earth in one of those 
green oval leaves — the things that the sun and the rivers have made 
out of dry ground. Daphne — daughter of Enipeus, and beloved by 
the Sun, — that fable gives you at once the two great facts about 
vegetation. Where warmth is and moisture — there also, the leaf. 
Where no warmth — there is no leaf; where there is no dew — no 
leaf. 

7. Look, then, to the branch you hold in your hand. That you 
can so hold it, or make a crown of it, if you choose, is the first thing 
I want you to note of it; — the proportion of size, namely, between 
the leaf and you. Great part of your life and character, as a human 
creature, has depended on that. Suppose all leaves had been spacious, 
like some palm leaves; solid, like cactus stem; or that trees had 
grown, as they might of course just as easily have grown, like mush- 



RELIGIOUS STUDIES IN NATURE 323 

rooms, all one great cluster of leaf round one stalk. I do not say 
that they are divided into small leaves only for your delight, or 
your service, as if you were the monarch of everything — even in thi^ 
atom of a globe. You are made of your proper size ; and the leaves 
of theirs: for reasons, and by laws, of which neither the leaves nor 
you know anything. Only note the harmonj between both, and 
the joy we may have in this division and mystery of the frivolous 
and tremulous petals, which break the light and the breeze, — com- 
pared to what, with the frivolous and the tremulous mind which 
is in us, we could have had out of domes, or penthouses, or walls 
of leaf.— FoZ. /, Ch. 3. 

GARDEN OP EDEN. 

29. When we speak carelessly of the traditions respecting the 
Garden of Eden, (or in Hebrew, remember. Garden of Delight,) w& 
are apt to confuse Milton's descriptions with those in the book of 
Genesis. Milton fills his Paradise with flowers; but no flowers are 
spoken of in Genesis. We may indeed conclude that in speaking of 
every herb of the field, flowers are included. But they are not named. 
The things that are named in the Garden of Delight are trees only. 

The words are, ''every tree that was pleasant to the sight and good 
for food;" and as if to mark the idea more strongly for us in the 
Septuagint, even the ordinary Greek word for tree is not used, but 
the word ivXov, — literally, every "wood," every piece of timber 
that was pleasant or good. They are indeed the "vivi travi," — living 
rafters of Dante's Apennine. 

Do you remember how those trees were said to be watered? Not 
by the four rivers only. The rivers could not supply the place of 
rain. No rivers do; for in truth they are the refuse of rain. No 
storm-clouds were there, nor hidings of the blue by darkening veil ; 
but there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the face of 
the ground, — or, as in Septuagint and Vulgate, "There went forth 
a fountain from the earth, and gave the earth to drink." — Vol. I, 
Ch. 3. 

30. When Ezekiel is describing to Pharaoh the greatness of the 
Assyrians, do you remember what image he gives of them? "Be- 
hold, the Assyrian was a cedar in Lebanon, with fair branches ; and 
his top was among the thick boughs ; the waters nourished him, and 
the deep brought him up, with her rivers running round about his 
plants. Under his branches did all the beasts of the field bring forth 
their young; and under his shadow dwelt all great nations." — Vol, 
1, Ch. 3. 

THE GARDEN OF GOD IN THE NATION. 

31. Now hear what follows. "The cedars in the Garden of God 
could not hide him. The fir trees were not like his boughs, and 



324 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

the chestnut trees were not like his branches; nor any tree in the 
Garden of God was like unto him in beauty." 

So that you see, whenever a nation rises into consistent, vital, and, 
through many generations, enduring power, there is still the Garden 
of God; still it is the water of life which feeds the roots of it; and 
still the succession of its people is imaged by the perennial leafage 
of trees of Paradise. Other symbols have been given often to show 
the evanescence and slightness of our lives — the foam upon the 
water, the grass on the housetop, the vapour that vanishes away; 
yet none of these are images of true human life. That life, wh.en it 
is real, is not evanescent; is not slight; does not vanish away. Every 
noble life leaves the fibre of it interwoven for ever in the work of 
the world; by so much, evermore, the strength of the human race 
has gained; more stubborn in the root, higher towards heaven in 
the branch ; and, "as a teil tree, and as an oak, — whose substance is 
in them when they cast their leaves, — so the holy seed is in the midst 
thereof." 

32. Only remember on what conditions. In the great Psalm of 
life, we are told that everything that a man doeth shall prosper, so 
only that he delight in the law of his God, that he hath not walked 
in the counsel of the wicked, nor sat in the seat of the scornful. Is 
it among these leaves of the perpetual Spring, — helpful leaves for 
the healing of the nations, — that we mean to have our part and 
place, or rather among the "brown skeletons of leaves tha«t lag, the 
forest brook along" ? For other leaves there are, and other streams 
that water them, — not water of life, but water of Acheron. Autum- 
nal leaves there are that strew the brooks, in Vallombrosa. Re-» 
member you how the name of the place was changed: "Once called 
'Sweet water' (Aqua bella), now, the Shadowy Vale." Portion in 
one or other name we must choose, all of us, with the living olive, 
by the living fountains of waters, or with the wild fig trees, whose 
leafage of human soul is strewed along the brooks of death, in the 
eternal Vallombrosa. — Vol. I, Ch. 3. 

THE FLOWER. 

THE MISSION OF THE FLOWER, 

2. The flower exists for its own sake, — not for the fruit's sake. 
The production of the fruit is an added honour to it — is a granted 
consolation to us for its death. But the flower is the end of the seed, 
not the seed of the flower. You are fond of cherries, perhaps ; and 
think that the use of cherry blossom is to produce cherries. Not at 
all. The use of cherries is to produce cherry blossoms; just as the use 
of bulbs is to produce hyacinths, — not of hyacinths to produce bulbs. 
Nay, that the flower can multiply by bulb, or root, or slip, as well 
as by seed, may show you at once how immaterial the seed-forming 



RELIGIOUS STUDIES IN NATURE ^325 

function is to the flower's existence. A flower is to the vegetable 
substance what a crystal is to the mineral. 

3. It is because of its beauty that its continuance is worth Heaven's 
while. The glory of it is in being, — not in begetting; and in the 
spirit and substance, — not the change. For the earth also has its 
flesh and spirit. Every day of spring is the earth's Whit Sunday — 
Fire Sunday. The falling fire of the rainbow, with the order of 
its zones, and the gladness of its covenant, — you may eat of it, like 
Esdras; but you feed upon it only that you may see it. Do you 
think that flowers were born to nourish the blind? 

Fasten well in your mind, then, the conception of order, and' 
purity, as the essence of the flower's being, no less than of the crys- 
tal's. A ruby is not made bright to scatter round it child-rubies; 
nor a flower, but in collateral and added honour, to give birth to 
other flowers. 

Two main facts, then, you have to study in every flower: the 
symmetry or order of it, and the perfection of its substance; first, 
the manner in which the leaves are placed for beauty of form ; then 
the spinning and weaving and blanching of their tissue, for the 
reception of purest colour, or refining to richest surface. — Vol. I, 
Ch. 4.. 

PAPAVER RHOEAS. 

SCAELET GLORY. 

2. In our English prayer-book translation, the first verse of the 
ninety-third Psalm runs thus: "The Lord is King; and hath put 
on glorious apparel." And although, in the future republican 
world, there are to be no lords, no kings, and no glorious apparel, it 
will be found convenient, for botanical purposes, to remember what 
such things once were; for when I said of the poppy, that it was 
"robed in the purple of the Caesars," the words gave, to any one who 
had a clear idea of a Csesar, and of his dress, a better, and even 
stricter, account of the flower than if I had only said, with Mr. 
Sowerby, "petals bright scarlet ;" which might just as well have been 
said of a pimpernel, or scarlet geranium; — but of neither of these 
latter should I have said "robed in purple of Caesars." What I 
meant was, first, that the poppy leaf looks dyed through and through, 
like glass, or Tyrian tissue; and not merely painted: secondly, that 
the splendour of it is proud, — almost insolently so. Augustus, in 
his glory, might have been clothed like one of these ; and Saul ; but 
not David nor Solomon; still less the teacher of Solomon, when 
He puts on "glorious apparel." — Vol. I, Ch. 5. 

DEGREES OF PERFECTION AND DIVINE ORDER. 

4. The perception of beauty, and the power of defining physical 
character, are based on moral instinct, and on the power of defining 



326 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

animal or human character. Nor is it possible to say that one 
flower is more highly developed, or one animal of a higher order, 
than another, without the assumption of a divine law of perfection 
to which the one more conforms than the other. — Vol. 7, Ch. 5. 



GENEALOGY. 

FLOWER, TREE AND GRACE. 

18. It is an historical fact that for many centuries the English 
nation believed that the Founder of its religion, spiritually, by the 
mouth of the King who spake of all herbs, had likened himself to 
two flowers, — the Rose of Sharon, and Lily of the Valley. 

It is also historical that the personal appearing of this Master of 
our religion was spoken of by our chief religious teacher in these 
terms: "The Grace of God, that bringeth salvation, hath appeared 
unto all men." And it is a constant fact that this "grace" or 
"favor" of God is spoken of as "giving us to eat of the Tree of 
Life." 

THE ROSE — THE TYPE OF WOMANHOOD. 

19. Now, comparing the botanical facts I have to express, with 
these historical ones, I find that the rose tribe has been formed 
among flowers, not in distant and monstrous geologic eras, but in 
the human epoch ; — that its "grace" or favor has been in all coun- 
tries so felt as to cause its acceptance everywhere for the most perfect 
physical type of womanhood; — and that the characteristic fruit of 
the tribe is so sweet, that it has become symbolic at once of the sub- 
tlest temptation, and the kindest ministry to the earthly passion of 
the human race. "Comfort me with apples, for I am sick of love." 
—Vol. I, Ch. 11. 

MORAL INFLUENCE OF FLOWERS. 

87. But through all the defeats by which insolent endeavors to 
sum the orders of Creation must be reproved, and in the midst of 
the successes by which patient insight will be surprised, the fact of 
the confirmation of species in plants and animals must remain al- 
ways a miraculous one. What outstretched sign of constant Om- 
nipotence can be more awful, than that the susceptibility to external 
influences, with the reciprocal power of transformation, in the or- 
gans of the plant; and the infinite powers of moral training and 
mental conception over the nativity of animals, should be so re- 
strained within impassable limits, and by inconceivable laws, that 
from generation to generation, under all the clouds and revolutions 
of heaven with its stars, and among all the calamities and convul- 
sions of the Earth with her passions, the numbers and the names 



RELIGIOUS STUDIES IN NATURE 327 

of her Kindred may still be counted for her in unfailing truth; — 
still the fifth sweet leaf unfold for the Rose, and the sixth spring 
for the Lily; and yet the wolf rave tameless round the folds of the 
pastoral mountains, and yet the tiger flame through the forests of 
the night.— Fo^. /, Ch. 11. 

NUMBER OF DAYS. 

9. "We describe a plant as small or great; and think we have 
given account enough of its nature and being. But the chief ques- 
tion for the plant, as for the human creature, is the Number of its 
days; for to the tree, as to its master, the Avords are forever true — 
"As thy Day is, so shall thy Strength be."— Fo?. I, Ch. 12. 

FLOWERS AND BIRDS AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

43. What the colours of flowers, or of birds, or of precious stones, 
or of the sea and air, and the blue mountains, and the evening and 
the morning, and the clouds of Heaven, were given for — they only 
know who can see them and can feel, and who pray that the sight 
and the love of them may be prolonged, where cheeks will not fade, 
nor sunsets die. — Vol. II, Ch. 1. 

THE BEAUTY OF RELIGION IN WOMEN. 

48. It will not be found, on reference to my other books, that 
they encourage young ladies to go into convents ; or undervalue the 
dignity of wnves and mothers. But, as surely as the sun does sever 
day from night, it will be found always that the noblest and love- 
liest women are dutiful and religious by continual nature ; and their 
passions are trained to obey them ; like their dogs. Homer, indeed, 
loves Helen with all his heart, and restores her, after all her naugh- 
tiness, to the queenship of her household ; but he never thinks of her 
as Penelope's equal, or Iphigenia's. Practically, in daily life, one 
often sees married women as good as saints ; but rarely, I think, un- 
less they have a good deal to bear from their husbands. Sometimes 
also, no doubt, the husbands have some trouble in managing St. 
Cecilia or St. Elizabeth.— FoZ. II, Ch. 1. 



VI 

THE STORM CLOUD OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 
Two Lectures. (1884.) 

These two lectures, delivered before such critical people as were 
accustomed to assemble at The London Institution, when viewed in 
connection with all the other themes of Ruskin's studies, illustrate 
the comprehensiveness of his mind. We cannot do better here than 
quote Collingwood, who says: — 

"His (Ruskin's) journals for fifty years past had kept careful ac- 
count of the weather, and effects of cloud. . . . The 'plague 
wind,' so he called it — tremulous, intermittent, blighting grass and 
trees — blew from no fixed point of the compass, but always brought 
the same dirty sky in place of the healthy rain-cloud of normal sum- 
mers; and the very thunderstorms seemed to be altered by its in- 
fluence into foul and powerless abortions of tempest. . . . Na- 
ture and Art seemed to be suffering together — the times were out of 
joint; and these were but signs and warnings of a more serious 
gloom. For, feeling as he did the weight of human wrong against 
which it was his mission to prophesy, believing in a Divine govern- 
ment of the world in all its literalness, he had the courage to appear 
before a London audience, like any seer of old, and to tell them that 
this eclipse of heaven was — if not a judgment — at all events a sym- 
bol of the moral darkness of a nation that had 'blasphemed the name 
of God deliberately and openly; and had done iniquity by procla- 
mation, every man doing as much injustice to his brother man as it 
was in his power to do.' It sounded like a voice crying in the wil- 
derness; to those that sat at east, a jest; to many who, without his 
religious feeling and without his ardent temperament, were yet 
working for the same ends of justice to the oppressed, it seemed like 
fanaticism. But to him, growing old, and wearying for the King- 
dom of Heaven which he despaired at last of seeing, there was but 
one reality — the great fact, as he knew it, of God above, and man 
either obeying or withstanding Him." 

328 



RELIGIOUS STUDIES IN NATURE 329 

With his characteristic, critical, mind Ruskin sharply deals with 
some of the statements of Scientists in these lectures, as for example 
the following: 

"Thus, when Professor Tyndall, endeavoring to write poetically 
of the sun, tells you that 'The Lilies of the field are his workman- 
ship,' you may observe, first, that since the sun is not a man, nothing 
that he does is workmanship; while even the figurative statement 
that he rejoices as a strong man to run his course, is one which 
Professor Tyndall has no intention whatever of admitting. And 
you may then observe, in the second place, that, if even in that fig- 
urative sense, the lilies of the field are the sun's workmanship, in the 
same sense the lilies of the hothouse are the stove's workmanship, — 
and in perfectly logical parallel, you, who are alive here to listen to 
me, because you have been warned and fed through the winter, are 
the workmanship of your own coal-scuttles." 

To be rightly appreciated this work should be read as a whole ; in- 
deed that is true of all the works of Ruskin in a very eminent de- 
gree. But it will serve the purpose of this volume to quote the fol- 
lowing closing sentences: — 

"What consolation, or what courage, through plague, danger or 
darkness, you can find in the conviction that you are nothing more 
than brute beasts driven by brute forces, your other tutors can tell 
you — not I : but this I can tell you — and with the authority of all the 
masters of thought since time was time, — that, while by no manner 
of vivisection you can learn what a Beast is, by only looking into 
your own hearts you may know what a Man is, — and know that his 
only true happiness is to live in Hope of something to be won by 
him, in Reverence of something to be worshipped by him, and in 
Love of something to be cherished by him, and cherished — for ever. 

Having these instincts, his only rational conclusion is that the ob- 
jects which can fulfil them may be by his effort gained, and by his 
faith discerned ; and his only earthly wisdom is to accept the united 
testimony of the men who have sought these things in the way they 
were commanded. Of whom no single one has ever said that his 
obedience or his faith had been vain, or found himself cast out from 
the choir of the living souls, whether here, or departed, for whom the 
song was written:" — 

God be merciful unto us, and bless us, and cause His face to shine upon us; 
That Thy way may be known upon earth, Thy saving health among all nations. 
Oh let the nations rejoice and sing for joy, for Thou shalt judge the people 

righteously and govern the nations upon earth. 
Then shall the earth yield her increase, and God, even our own God, shall 

bless us. 
God shall bless us, and all the ends of the earth shall fear Him. 



VII 

IN MONTIBUS SANCTIS. 
Studies op Mountain Form. Three Chaps. (1884.) 

Mr. Ruskin found frequent calls for repeating his lectures and for 
re-setting certain portions of his larger works so as to emphasize sub- 
jects which were of wider interest. This is a work of that character. 
In the preface the author says: — "I receive at present, with in- 
creasing frequency, requests or counsels from people whose wishes 
and advice I respect, for the reprinting of Modern Painters. . . . 
The following paper, prepared to be read before the Mineralogical 
Society . . . and proposing, in brief abstract, the questions 
which are at the root of rock-science, may not unfitly introduce the 
chapters of geological inquiry, begun at the foot of the Matterhorn 
thirty years ago." 

The paper, thus referred to, constitutes the first of the three chap- 
ters, the second and third being reprints from Modern Painters, viz. : 
"The Dry Land" and "Materials of Mountains." Selections from 
these will be found in their order. — See Book ii, M. P. 4- o-i^d 5. 



330 



VIII 

COELI ENRARRANT. 

Studies op Cloud Form. Two Chaps. (1884.) 

This is a continuance of In Montibus Sanctis. The two chapters: 
"The Firmament" and "Cloud Balancing" being reprints, with 
some slight changes, from Modern Painters. They are certainly of 
great interest from our present view-point and selections will be 
found in their order. — See Book ii, M. P. If. and 5. 

In the preface to this reprint, written twenty-eight years after 
the issue of the original work, Mr. Ruskin says : — 

"I find nothing to alter, and little to explain, in the following 
portions of my former work. . . . But it may be necessary to 
advise the student of these chapters not to interpret any of their ex- 
pressions of awe or wonder as meaning to attribute any supernatural, 
or in any special sense miraculous, character to the phenomena de- 
scribed, other than that of their adaptation to human feeling or 
need. I did not in the least mean to insinuate, . . . that be- 
cause the forms of a thunder cloud were terrific, that they were 
less natural than those of a diamond; but in all the forms and 
actions of nonsentient things, I recognized constant miracle, and 
according to the need and deserving of man, more or less constantly 
manifest Deity." 



33« 



IX 

HORTUS INCLUSUS. 

Letters to Two Ladies. (1887.) 

If any lady is seeking a string of pearls, set in gold, let her read 
these letters. They were written by Ruskin to two ladies, (sisters) 
Mary and Susanna Beever, in 1874-5, and were edited for publica- 
tion by Albert Fleming who, at the request of Ruskin, added some 
of the correspondence from "Susie." 

In his preface Ruskin says: — "The ladies to whom these letters 
were written have been, throughout their brightly tranquil lives, at 
once sources and loadstones of all good to the village in which they 
had their homes. Sources they have been of good, like one of the 
mountain springs, ever to be found in need. . . . The poor 
and the sick could find them always; or rather, they watched for 
and prevented all poverty and pain that care and tenderness could 
relieve or heal. Loadstones they were, as steadily bringing the 
light of gentle and wise souls about them as the crest of their guar- 
dian mountain gives pause to the morning clouds; in themselves 
they were types of perfect womanhood in its constant happiness, 
queens alike of their own hearts and of a Paradise in which they 
knew the names and sympathised with the spirits of every living 
creature that God had made to play therein, or to blossom in its sun- 
shine or shade." 

Mr. Fleming adds : — "The letters are the fruit of the most beauti- 
ful friendship I have been permitted to witness. . . . Mr. Rus- 
kin has desired me to add a few words, giving my own description 
of Susie, and speaking of my relation to them both. To him I owe 
the guidance of my life — all its best impulses, all its worthiest 
efforts ; to her some of its happiest hours, and the blessings alike of 
incentive and reproof." 

"Susie's" letters are charmingly full of birds and she seems to 
sing with them. 

332 



THE KING OF THE GOLDEN RIVER. 
A Fairy Story. (1851.) 

The Publishers of this story state in their advertisement that 
it was written "at the request of a very young lady, and solely for 
her amusement, without any idea of publication. It has since re- 
mained in the possession of a friend, to whose suggestion, and the 
passive assent of the author, the publishers are indebted for the op- 
portunity of printing it." 

If the reader will turn to the first chapter of our Life of Ruskin 
he may find an account of this somewhat humorous incident. The 
story is of the grotesque order and its theme may be judged by the 
title of its first Chapter : — "How the Agricultural system of the Black 
Brothers was interfered with by Southwest Wind Esquire," 

To this story is added an illustrated Nursery Rhyme of "Dame 
Wiggins of Lee and her Wonderful Cats," which might well find a 
place in our Nursery literature, instead of such horrors as "Blue- 
beard," and other meaningless and often immoral rhymes. 

These stories serve to reveal an unsuspected side of Ruskin's versa- 
tile mind. 



333 



BOOK FIFTH 



Religious Lessons in Political 
Economy and Other Prac- 
tical Questions 



RELIGIOUS LESSONS IN 
POLITICAL ECONOMY 



A JOY FOR EVER. 
Two Lectures — with Additions. (1857.) 

1. Discovery and Application of Art. 

2. Accumulation and Distribution. 

The subject of this treatise was first presented in the form of 
lectures which were delivered at Manchester (England). These 
lectures were published the same year under the title, ''The Politi- 
cal Economy of Art." Afterwards they were reprinted, with ad- 
denda, under the present title which Mr. Ruskin says was suggested 
by the line from Keats: — 

"A thing of beauty is a joy for ever." 

The work is a vigorous defence of the democracy of truth in 
relation to wealth as against the current doctrine of plutonomy. 
The spirit of it is revealed in the opening of the first lecture : — 

Among the various characteristics of the age in which we live, 
as compared with other ages of this not yet very experienced world, 
one of the most notable appears to me to be the just and whole- 
some contempt in which we hold poverty. I repeat, the just and 
wholesome contempt; ... I should not have ventured to ask you 
to listen to me, unless I had entertained a profound respect for 
wealth — true wealth, that is to say; for, of course, we ought to re- 
spect neither wealth nor anything else that is false of its kind. . . . 
But true wealth I hold in great honour; and sympathize, for the 
most part, with that extraordinary feeling of the present age which 
publicly pays this honour to riches 

For wealth is simply one of the greatest powers which can be 

337 



338 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

entrusted to human hands: a power, not indeed to be envied, be- 
cause it seldom makes us happy; but still less to be abdicated or 
despised; while, in these days, and in this country, it has become 
a power all the more notable, in that the possessions of a rich man 
are not represented, as they used to be, by wedges of gold or cof- 
fers of jewels, but by masses of men variously employed, over 
whose bodies and minds the wealth, according to its direction, ex- 
ercises harmful or helpful influence, and becomes, in that alter- 
native. Mammon either of Unrighteousness or of Righteousness. 

Not the least valuable part of the work is the "Addenda," which 
embraces the subjects of "Fatherly Authority," "Right to Public 
Support," Public Favour," "Economy of Literature," "Silk and 
Purple." Also, addresses on "Education in Art," "Social Policy," 
etc. 

THE MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP. 

115. The lesson is given under the form of a story about money. 
Money was given to the servants to make use of: the unprofitable 
servant dug in the earth, and hid his Lord's money. Well, we, 
in our political and spiritual application of this, say, that of course 
money doesn't mean money, it means wit, it means intellect, it 
means influence in high quarters, it means everything in the world 
except itself. And do not you see what a pretty and pleasant come- 
off there is for most of us, in this spiritual application? Of course, 
if we had wit, we would use if for the good of our fellow-creatures. 
But we haven't wit. Of course, if we had influence with the bishops, 
we would use it for the good of the Church; but we haven't any 
influence with the bishops. Of course, if we had political power, 
we would use it for the good of the nation ; but we have no politi- 
cal power; we have no talents entrusted to us of any sort or kind. 
It is true we have a little money, but the parable can't possibly 
mean anything so vulgar as money; our money's our own. 

I believe, if you think seriously of this matter, you will feel 
that the first and most literal application is just as necessary a one 
as any other — that the story does very specially mean what it says — 
plain money; and that the reason we don't at once believe it does 
so, is a sort of tacit idea that while thought, wit, and intellect, and 
all power of birth and position, are indeed c/iven to us, and, there- 
fore, to be laid out for the Giver, — our wealth has not been given 
to us; but we have worked for it, and have a right to spend it as 
we choose. I think you will find that is the real substance of our 
understanding in this matter. Beauty, we say, is given by God 
— it is a talent; strength is given by God — it is a talent; position 
is given by God — it is a talent; but money is proper wages for 



RELIGIOUS LESSONS IN POLITICAL ECONOMY 339 

our day's work — it is not a talent, it is a due. We may justly spend 
it on ourselves, if we have worked for it. — Led. II. 

MONEY AND TALENTS. 

1 17. There would be some shadow of excuse for this, were it not 
that the very power of making the money is itself only one of 
the applications of that intellect or strength which we confess to 
be talents. Why is one man richer than another? Because he is 
more industrious, more persevering, and more sagacious. Well, 
who made him more persevering and more sagacious than others? 
That power of endurance, that quickness of apprehension, that 
calmness of judgment, which enable him to seize the opportuni- 
ties that others lose, and persist in the lines of conduct in which 
others fail — are these not talents? — are they not in the present state 
of the world, among the most distinguished and influential of men- 
tal gifts? And is it not wonderful, that while we should be ut- 
terly ashamed to use a superiority of body, in order to thrust our 
weaker companions aside from some place of advantage, we un- 
hesitatingly use our superiorities of mind to thrust them back 
from whatever good that strength of mind can attain. You would 
be indignant if you saw a strong man walk into a theatre or a 
lecture-room, and, calmly choosing the best place, take his feeble 
neighbour by the shoulder, and turn him out of it into the back 
seats, or the street. You would be equally indignant if you saw a 
stout fellow thrust himself up to a table where some hungry chil- 
dren were being fed, and reach his arm over their heads and take 
their bread from them. But you are not the least indignant if 
when a man has stoutness of thought and swiftness of capacity, 
and, instead of being long-armed only, has the much greater gift 
of being long-headed — you think it perfectly just that he should 
use his intellect to take the bread out of the mouths of all the other 
men in the town who are of the same trade with him; or use his 
breadth and sweep of sight to gather some branch of the commerce 
of the country into one great cobweb, of which he is himself to 
be the central spider, making every thread vibrate with the points 
of his claws, and commanding every avenue with the facets of his 
eyes. You see no injustice in this. — Led. II. 

WHAT FOOLS ARE FOR. 

118. But there is injustice ; and, let us trust, one of which honour- 
able men will at no very distant period disdain to be guilty. In some 
degree, however, it is indeed not unjust; in some degree it is nec- 
essary and intended. It is assuredly just that idleness should bo 
surpassed by energy; that the widest influence should be possessed 
by those who are best able to wield it; and that a wise man, at 
the end of his career, should be better off than a fool. But for that 



340 THE RELIGION. OF RUSKIN 

reason, is the fool to be wretched, utterly crushed down, and left in 
all the suffering which his conduct and capacity naturally inflict? 
— Not so. What do you suppose fools were made for? That you 
might tread upon them, and starve them, and get the better of 
them in every possible way? By no means. They were made 
that wise people might take care of them. That is the true and 
plain fact concerning the relations of every strong and wise man. 
to the world about him. He has his strength given him, not that 
he may crush the weak, but that he may support and guide them. 
In his own household he is to be the guide and the support of his 
children; out of his household he is still to be the father, that 
is, the guide and support of the weak and the poor; not merely 
of the meritoriously weak and the innocently poor, but of the 
guiltily and punishably poor ; of the men who ought to have known 
better — of the poor who ought to be ashamed of themselves. It 
is nothing to give pension and cottage to the widow who has lost 
her son; it is nothing to give food and medicine to the workman 
who has broken his arm, or the decrepit woman wasting in sick- 
ness. But it is something to use you time and strength to war with 
the waywardness and thoughtlessness of mankind; to keep the err- 
ing workman in your service till you have made him an unerr- 
ing one; and to direct your fellow-merchant to the opportunity 
which his dulness would have lost. This is much ; but it is yet 
more, when you have fully achieved the superiority which is due 
to you, and acquired the wealth which is the fitting reward of your 
sagacity, if you solemnly accept the responsibility of it, as it is 
the helm and guide of labour far and near. — Led. II. 

RESPONSIBILITY OF WEALTH. 

119. You who have it in your hands, are in reality the pilots 
of the power and effort of the State. It is entrusted to you as an 
authority to be used for good or evil, just as completely as kingly 
authority was ever given to a prince, or military command to a 
captain. And according to the quantity of it that you have in 
your hands, you are the arbiters of the will and work of England ; 
and the whole issue, whether the work of the State shall suffice 
for the State or not, depends upon you. You may stretch out your 
sceptre over the heads of the English labourers, and say to them, 
as they stoop to its waving, "Subdue this obstacle that has baflBed 
our fathers, put away this plague that consumes our children; 
water these dry places, plough these desert ones, carry this food to 
those who are in hunger; carry this light to those who are in 
darkness; carry this life to those who are in death;" or on the 
other side you may say to her labourers: "Here am I; this power 
is in my hand; come, build a mound here for me to be throned 
upon, high and wide; come, make crowns for my head, that men 



RELIGIOUS LESSONS IN POLITICAL ECONOMY 341 

may see them shine from far away; come, weave tapestries for 
my feet, that I may tread softly on the silk and purple; come, 
dance before me, that I may be gay; and sing sweetly to me, that 
I may slumber; so shall I live in joy, and die in honour." And 
'better than such an honourable death, it were that the day had 
perished wherein we were born, and the night in which it was said 
there is a child conceived. — Led. II. 

THE MINISTRY AND HONOUR OF WEALTH. 

120. A time will come — I do not think even now it is far from us 
— w^hen this golden net of the world's wealth will be spread abroad 
as the flaming meshes of morning cloud are over the sky; bearing 
with them the joy of light and the dew of the morning, as well 
as the summons to honourable and peaceful toil. What less can 
we hope from your wealth than this, rich men of England, when 
once you feel fully how, by the strength of your possessions — 
not, observe, by the exhaustion, but by the administration of them 
and the power — you can direct the acts, — command the energies 
— inform the ignorance, — prolong the existence, of the whole human 
race; and how, even of worldly wisdom, which man employs faith- 
fully, it is true, not only that her ways are pleasantness, but that her 
paths are peace; and that, for all the children of men, as well as 
for those to whom she is given, Length of days is in her right 
hand, as in her left hand Riches and Honour? — Led. II. 

PROVIDENCE AND HUMAN ACTION. 

133. We are much in the habit of considering happy accidents as 
what are called "special Providences;" and thinking that when 
any great work needs to be done, the man who is to do it will 
certainly be pointed out by Providence, be he shepherd or sea- 
boy; and prepared for his work by all kinds of minor providences, 
in the best possible way. Whereas all the analogies of God's op- 
erations in other matters prove the contrary of this; we find that 
"of thousand seeds. He often brings but one to bear," often not one ; 
and the one seed which He appoints to bear is allowed to bear 
crude or perfect fruit according to the dealings of the husbandman 
with it. And there cannot be a doubt in the mind of any person 
accustomed to take broad and logical views of the world's history, 
that its events are ruled by Providence in precisely the same man- 
ner as its harvests; that the seeds of good rnd evil are broadcast 
among men, just as the seeds of thistles and fruits are; and that 
according to the force of our industry, and wisdom of our hus- 
bandry, the ground will bring forth to us figs or thistles. So that 
when it seems needed that a certain work should be done for the 
world, and no man is there to do it, we have no right to say that 
God did not wish it to be done; and therefore sent no man able to 
do it. The probability (if I wrote my own convictions, I should 



342 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

say certainty) is, that He sent many men, hundreds of men, ablo 
to do it; and that we have rejected them, or crushed them; by our 
previous folly of conduct or of institution, we have rendered it 
impossible to distinguish, or impossible to reach them; and when 
the need for them comes, and we suffer for the want of them, it is 
not that God refuses to send us deliverers, and especially appoints 
all our consequent sufferings; but that He has sent, and we have 
refused, the deliverers; and the pain is then wrought out by His 
eternal law, as surely as famine is wrought out by eternal law for 
a nation which will neither plough nor sow. No less are we in 
error in supposing, as we so frequently do, that if a man be found, 
he is sure to be in all respects fitted for the work to be done, as 
the key is to the lock: and that every accident which happened in 
the forging him, only adapted him more truly to the wards I 

PROVIDENCE AND GREAT MEN. 

It is pitiful to hear historians beguiling themselves and their 
readers, by tracing in the early history of great men, the minor cir- 
cumstances which fitted them for the work they did, without ever 
taking notice of the other circumstances which as assuredly unfitted 
them for it; so concluding that miraculous interposition prepared 
them in all points for everything, and that they did all that could 
have been desired or hoped for from them: whereas the certainty 
of the matter is that, throughout their lives, they were thwarted 
and corrupted by some things as certainly as they were helped and 
disciplined by others; and that, in the kindliest and most reverent 
view which can justly be taken of them, they were but poor mis- 
taken creatures, struggling with a world more profoundly mistaken 
than they; assuredly sinned against, or sinning in thousands of 
ways, and bringing out at last a maimed result — not what they 
might or ought to have done, but all that could be done against the 
world's resistance, and in spite of their own sorrowful falsehood to 
themselves. — A ddenda. 

PREVENTION BETTER THAN CURE. 

184. Without going so far as the exile of the inconveniently wick- 
ed, and translation of the inconveniently sick, to their proper spirit- 
ual mansions, we should at least be certain that we do not waste 
care in protracting disease which might have been spent in pre- 
serving health; that we do not appease in the splendour of our 
turreted hospitals the feelings of compassion which, rightly di- 
rected, might have prevented the need of them ; nor pride our- 
selves on the peculiar form of Christian benevolence which leaves 
the cottage roofless to model the prison, and spends itself with 
zealous preference where, in the keen words of Carlyle, if you desire 
the material on which maximum expenditure of means and effort 
■will produce the minimum result, "here you accurately have it."T— 
Addenda. 



II 

UNTO THIS LAST. 
Four Essays. (1860.) 

These essays, embodying much of Ruskin's early views on Politi- 
cal Economy, were first published in the Cornhill Magazine. Eight- 
een months later they were issued in book form. Mr. Harrison's 
opinion that this was "the most serviceable thing" that Ruskin ever 
wrote is, perhaps, not too strong a statement: not that it is the 
finest from the points of view of literature or philosophy, but as 
an instrument of education, of sound economic truth, it is the 
most practical, and appeals to the common sense of all lovers of 
truth. Its object is best stated by Ruskin himself: 

"It was the first object of these papers to give an accurate and 
stable definition of wealth. Their second object was to show that 
the acquisition of wealth was finally possible only under certain 
moral conditions of society, of which quite the first was a belief 
in the existence and even, for practical purposes, in the attaina- 
bility of honesty. 

Without venturing to pronounce — since on such a matter 
human judgment is by no means conclusive — ^what is, or is not, 
the noblest of God's works, we may yet admit so much of Pope's 
assertion as that an honest man is among His best works pres- 
ently visible, and, as things stand, a somewhat rare one ; but not an 
incredible or miraculous work; still less an abnormal one. Hon- 
esty is not a disturbing force, which deranges the orbits of econo- 
my ; but a consistent and commanding force, by obedience to which 
— and by no other obedience — those orbits can continue clear of 
chaos. 

To these two points, then, the following essays are mainly di- 
rected. The subject of the organization of labour is only casually 
touched upon; because, if we once can get a sufficient quantity 
of honesty in our captains, the organization of labour is easy, and 
will develop itself without quarrel or difficulty; but if we can- 

343 



344 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN. 

not get honesty in our captains, the organization of labour is for 
evermore impossible." 

The author takes for his motto to these essays the two Scripture 
passages : — 

''Friend, I do thee no wrong. Didst not thou agree with me for a 
penny f Take that thine is, and go thy way. I will give unto this 
last even as unto thee." — Matt. 20:13. 

"// ye think good, give me my price; and if not, forbear. So they 
weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver." — Zeeh. 11 :12. 

The work embraces a very wide range of subjects, treated under 
the four heads: — 

1. The Roots of Honour. 3. Qui Judicatis Terram. 

2. The Veins of Wealth. 4. Ad Valorem. 

The following selections will be of value, not only for occasional 
reference, but also for bringing into special notice the noble treat- 
ment of certain great principles; but no lover of truth, in business 
or public morals, should be satisfied until he has read the whole 
of these masterly essays which are easily available in popular edi- 
tions. 

JUSTICE AS A BASIS OF HUMAN ACTION. 

7. No human actions ever were intended by the Maker of men to 
be guided by balances of expediency, but by balances of justice. He 
has therefore rendered all endeavours to determine expediency 
futile for evermore. No man ever knew, or can know, what will 
be the ultimate result to himself, or to others, of any given line 
of conduct. But every man may know, and most of us do know, 
what is a just and unjust act. And all of us may know also, that 
the consequences of justice will be ultimately the best possible, 
both to others and ourselves, though we can neither say what is 
best, nor how it is likely to come to pass. I have said balances of 
justice, meaning, in the term justice, to include affection, — such 
affection as one man owes to another. All right relations between 
master and operative, and all their best interests, ultimately depend 
on these. — Essay I. 

THE FUNCTIONS AND DUTIES OF PROFESSIONS. 

21. Five great intellectual professions, relating to daily necessities 
of life, have hitherto existed — three exist necessarily, in every civi- 
lized nation : The Soldier's profession is to defend it. The Pastor's, to 
teach it. The Physician's, to keep it in health. The Lawyer's, to 
enforce justice in it. The Merchant's, to provide for it. 

And the duty of all these men is, on due occasion, to die for it. 
"On due occasion," namely: — 
The Soldier, rather than leave his post in battle. 



RELIGIOUS LESSONS IN POLITICAL ECONOMY 345 

The Physician, rather than leave his post in plague. 

The Pastor, rather than teach Falsehood, 

The Lawyer, rather than countenance Injustice. 

The Merchant — What is his "due occasion" of death? 
It is the main question for the merchant, as for all of us. For, 
truly, the man who does not know when to die, does not know 
how to live. — Essay I. 

MORAL QUALITY OF WEALTH. 

37. It is impossible to conclude, of any given mass of acquired 
wealth, merely by the fact of its existence, whether it signifies good or 
evil to the nation in the midst of which it exists. Its real value 
depends on the moral sign attached to it, just as sternly as that of 
a mathematical quantity depends on the algebraical sign attached 
to it. Any given accumulation of commercial wealth may be in- 
dicative, on the one hand, of faithful industries, progressive ener- 
gies, and productive ingenuities; or, on the other, it may be indica- 
tive of mortal luxury, merciless tyranny, ruinovis chicane. Some 
treasures are heavy with human tears, as an ill-stored harvest with 
untimely rain; and some gold is brighter in sunshine than it is 
in substance. — Essay II. 

REAL WEALTH AND SEEMING WEALTH. 

38. That which seems to be wealth may in verity be only the gilded 
index of far-reaching ruin; a wrecker's handful of coin gleaned 
from the beach to which he has beguiled an argosy; a camp-fol- 
lower's bundle of rags unwrapped from the breasts of goodly sol- 
diers dead; the purchase-pieces of potter's fields, wherein shall be 
buried together the citizen and the stranger. 

And therefore, the idea that directions can be given for the gain- 
ing of wealth, irrespectively of the consideration of its moral 
sources, or that any general and technical law of purchase and 
gain can be set down for national practice, is perhaps the most 
insolently futile of all that ever beguiled men through their vices. 
So far as I know, there is not in history record of anything so 
disgraceful to the human intellect as the modern idea that the 
commercial text, "Buy in the cheapest market and sell in the 
dearest," represents, or under any circumstances could represent, 
an available principle of national economy. Buy in the cheapest 
market? — yes; but what made your market cheap? Charcoal may 
be cheap among your roof timbers after a fire, and bricks may be 
cheap in your streets after an earthquake; but fire and earthquake 
may not therefore be national benefits. Sell in the dearest? — yes, 
truly; but what made your market dear? You sold your bread 
well to-day; was it to a dying man who gave his last coin for it, 
and will never need bread more: or to a rich man who to-morrow 



346 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

•will buy your farm over your head; or to a soldier on his way to 
pillage the bank in which you have put your fortune? 

Every question concerning these things merges itself ultimately 
in the great question of justice, which, the ground being thus far 
cleared for it, I will enter upon in the next paper, leaving only, 
in this, three final points for the reader's consideration. — Essay IL 

VALUE OF MONEY CONSISTS IN ITS POWER. 

89. It has been shown that the chief value and virtue of money 
consists in its having power over human beings; that, without this 
power, large material possessions are useless, and to any person 
possessing such power, comparatively unnecessary. But power over 
human beings is attainable by other means than by money. As 
I said a few pages back, the money power is always imperfect and 
doubtful; there are many things which cannot be retained by it. 
Many joys may be given to men which cannot be bought for gold, 
and many fidelities found in them which cannot be rewarded with 
it. 

HUMAN SOULS AS BUSINESS ASSETS. 

40. 41. Since the essence of wealth consists in power over men, will 
it not follow that the nobler and the more in number the persons are 
over whom it has power, the greater the wealth? 

It may be discovered that the true veins of wealth are purple — 
and not in Rock, but in Flesh — perhaps even that the final out- 
come and consummation of all wealth is in the producing as many 
as possible full-breathed, bright-eyed, and happy-hearted human 
creatures. Our modern wealth, I think, has rather a tendency 
the other way; — most political economists appearing to consider 
multitudes of human creatures not conducive to wealth, or at best 
conducive to it only by remaining in a dim-eyed and narrow- 
chested state of being. 

Nevertheless, it is open, I repeat, to serious question, which I 
leave to the reader's pondering, whether, among national manu- 
factures, that of Souls of a good quality may not at last turn out 
a quite leadingly lucrative one? Nay, in some far-away and yet 
undreamt-of hour, I can even imagine that England may cast all 
thoughts of possessive wealth back to the barbaric nations among 
whom they first arose; and that, while the sands of the Indus and 
adamant of Golconda may yet stiffen the housings of the charger, 
and flash from the turban of the slave, she, as a Christian mother, 
mjay at last attain to the virtues and the treasures of a Heathen one, 
and be able to lead forth her Sons, saying, — 

"These are my Jewels." 

— Essay II. 



RELIGIOUS LESSONS IN POLITICAL ECONOMY 347 

MAXIMS OF A WISE MAN. 

42. Some centuries before the Christian era, a Jew merchant 
engaged in business on the Gold Coast, and reported to have made 
one of the largest fortunes of his time (held also in repute for 
much practical sagacity), left among his ledgers some general 
maxims concerning wealth, which have been preserved, strangely 
enough, even to our own days. They were held in considerable re- 
spect by the most active traders of the middle ages, especially by the 
Venetians, who even went so far in their admiration as to place 
a statue of the old Jew on the angle of one of their principal 
public buildings. Of late years these writings have fallen into 
disrepute, being opposed in every particular to the spirit of modern 
commerce. Nevertheless I shall reproduce a passage or two from 
them here, partly because they may interest the reader by their 
novelty; and chiefly because they will show him that it is possible 
for a very practical and acquisitive tradesman to hold, through a 
not unsuccessful career, that principle of distinction between well- 
gotten and ill-gotten wealth, which, partially insisted on in my last 
paper, it must be our work more completely to examine in this. — 
Es&ay III. 

HONESTY IN ADVERTISING. 

43. He says, for instance, in one place : "The getting of treasure by 
a lying tongue is a vanity tossed to and fro of them that seek 
death;'" adding in another, with the same meaning (he had a 
curious way of doubling his sayings) : "Treasures of wickedness 
profit nothing; but justice delivers from death.'" Both these pas- 
sages are notable for their assertion of death as the only real issue 
and sum of attainment by any unjust scheme of wealth. If we 
read, instead of "lying tongue," "lying label, title, pretence, or 
advertisement," we shall more clearly perceive the bearing of the 
words on modern business. The seeking of death is a grand ex- 
pression of the true course of men's toil in such business. We 
usually speak as if death pursued us, and we fled from him; but 
that is only so in rare instances. Ordinarily, he masks himself — 
makes himself beautiful — all-glorious; not like the King's daugh- 
ter, all-glorious within, but outwardly: his clothing of wrought 
gold. We pursue him frantically all our days, he flying or hiding 
from us. Our crowning success at threescore and ten is utterly and 
perfectly to seize, and hold him in his eternal integrity — robes, 
ashes, and sting. — Essay III. 

god's JUSTICE AND THE POOR. 

43. Again : the merchant says, "He that oppresseth the poor to in- 

iProv. 21: 6. 2 Pro v. 10: 2. 



348 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

crease his riches, shall surely come to want.'" And again, more 
strongly: "Rob not the poor because he is poor; neither oppress 
the aiflicted in the place of business. For God shall spoil the soul 
of those that spoiled them."' 

This "robbing the poor because he is poor," is especially the 
mercantile form of theft, consisting in taking advantage of a man's 
necessities in order to obtain his labour or property at a reduced 
price. The ordinary highwayman's opposite form of robbery — of 
the rich, because he is rich — does not appear to occur so often to 
the old merchant's mind; probably because, being less profitable 
and more dangerous than the robbery of the poor, it is rarely prac- 
ticed by persons of discretion. 

44. But the two most remarkable passages in their deep general sig- 
nificance are the following: — 

"The rich and the poor have met. God is their maker."' 
"The rich and the poor have met. God is their light." 
They "have met;" more literally, have stood in each other's way 
(o-bviaverunt) . That is to say, as long as the world lasts, the action 
and counteraction of wealth and poverty, the meeting, face to face, 
of rich and poor, is just as appointed and necessary a law of that 
world as the flow of stream to sea, or the interchange of power 
among the electric clouds: — "God is their maker." But, also, this 
action may be either gentle and just, or convulsive and destructive: 
it may be by rage of devouring flood, or by lapse of serviceable 
wave; — in blackness of thunderstroke, or continual force of vital 
fire, soft, and shapeable into love-syllables from far away. And 
which of these it shall be depends on both rich and poor knowing 
that God is their light; that in the mystery of human life, there 
is no other light than this by which they can see each other's faces, 
and live; — light, which is called in another of the books among 
which the merchant's maxims have been preserved, the "sun of 
justice," of which it is promised that it shall rise at last with "heal- 
ing" (health-giving or helping, making whole or setting at one) 
in its wings. For truly this healing is only possible by means of 
justice; no love, no faith, no hope will do it; men will be unwisely 
fond — vainly faithful, unless primarily they are just; and the mis- 
take of the best men through generation after generation, has been 
that great one of thinking to help the poor by almsgiving, and by 
preaching of patience or of hope, and by every other means, emol- 
lient or consolatory, except the one thing which God orders for 
them, justice. But this justice, with its accompanying holiness or 
helpfulness, being even by the best men denied in its trial time, 
is by the mass of men hated wherever it appears: so that, when 
the choice was one day fairly put to them, they denied the Help- 
ful One and the Just; and desired a murderer, sedition-raiser, and 

» ProT. 22 : 16. » Prov. 22 : 22. » Prov. 22 : 2. 



RELIGIOUS LESSONS IN POLITICAL ECONOMY 349 

robber, to be granted to them; — the murderer instead of the Lord 
of Life, the sedition-raiser instead of the Prince of Peace, and the 
robber instead of the just Judge of all the world. — Essay III. 

LIFE, THE ONLY WEALTH. 

77. There is no Wealth but Life. Life, including all its powers of 
love, of joy, and of admiration. That country is the richest which 
nourishes the greatest number of noble and happy human beings; 
that man is richest who, having perfected the functions of his own 
life to the utmost, has also the widest helpful influence, both per- 
sonal, and by means of his possessions, over the lives of others. 

A strange political economy; the only one, nevertheless, that 
ever was or can be: all political economy founded on self-interest 
being but the fulfillment of that which once brought schism into 
the Policy of angels, and ruin into the Economy of Heaven. 

78. "The greatest number of human beings noble and happy." But 
is the nobleness consistent with the number? Yes, not only con- 
sistent with it, but essential to it. The maximum of life can only 
be reached by the maximum of virtue. In this respect the law of 
human population differs wholly from that of animal life. The 
multiplication of animals is checked only by want of food, and 
by the hostility of races; the population of the gnat is restrained 
by the hunger of the swallow, and that of the swallow by the 
scarcity of gnats. Man, considered as an animal, is indeed limited 
by the same laws ; hunger, or plague, or war, are the necessary and 
only restraints upon his increase, — effectual restraints hitherto, — 
his principal study having been how most swiftly to destroy him- 
self, or ravage his dwelling-places, and his highest skill directed to 
give range to the famine, seed to the plague, and sway to the 
sword. But, considered as other than an animal, his increase is 
not limited by these laws. It is limited only by the limits of his 
courage and his love. Both of these have their bounds; and ought 
to have: his race has its bounds also; but these have not yet been 
reached, nor will be reached for ages. — Essay IV. 

THE POOR NEED MORE THAN MEAT. 

79. The life is more than the meat. The rich not only refuse food 
to the poor; they refuse wisdom; they refuse virtue; they refuse 
salvation. Ye sheep without shepherd, it is not the pasture that 
has been shut from you, but the presence. Meat! perhaps your 
right to that may be pleadable ; but other rights have to be pleaded 
first. Claim your crumbs from the table, if you will; but claim 
them as children, not as dogs; claim your right to be fed, but claim 
more loudly your right to be holy, perfect, and pure. 

Strange words to be used of working people: "What! holy; with- 
out any long robes nor anointing oils; these rough-jacketed, rough- 



350 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

worded persons; set to nameless and dishonoured service? Perfect I 
— these, with dim eyes and cramped limbs, and slowly awaken- 
ing minds? Pure — these, with sensual desire and grovelling 
thought; foul of body, and coarse of soul?" It may be so; never- 
theless, such as they are, they are the holiest, perfectest, purest 
persons the earth can at present show. They may be what you 
have said; but if so, they yet are holier than we, who have left 
them thus. But what can be done for them? Who can clothe — 
who teach — who restrain their multitudes? What end can there 
be for them at last, but to consume one another? — Essay IV. 

THE SEARCH FOR FOOD^ AND SOMETHING BETTER. 

82. The presence of a wise population implies the search for felicity 
as well as for food; nor can any population reach its maximum 
but through that wisdom which "rejoices" in the habitable parts 
of the earth. The desert has its appointed place and work; the 
eternal engine, whose beam is the earth's axle, whose beat is its 
year, and whose breath is its ocean, will still divide imperiously to 
their desert kingdoms, bound with unfurrowable rock, and swept 
by unarrested sand, their powers of frost and fire: but the zones 
and lands between, habitable, will be loveliest in habitation. The 
desire of the heart is also the light of the eyes. No scene is con- 
tinually and untiringly loved, but one rich by joyful human la- 
bour; smooth in field, fair in garden; full in orchard; trim, sweet, 
and frequent in homestead; ringing with voices of vivid existence. 
No air is sweet that is silent ; it is only sweet when full of low cur- 
rents of under sound — triplets of birds, and murmur and chirp of 
insects, and deep-toned words of men, and wayward trebles of child- 
hood. As the art of life is learned, it will be found at last that all 
lovely things are also necessary: — the wild flower by the wayside, 
as well as the tended corn ; and the wild birds and creatures of the 
forest, as well as the tended cattle; because man doth not live by 
bread only, but also by the desert manna ; by every wondrous word 
and unknowable work of God. Happy, in that he knew them not, 
nor did his fathers know; and that round about him reaches yet 
into the infinite, the amazement of his existence. — Essay IV. 

PROVIDENCE AND CONTENTMENT. 

83. We continually hear it recommended by sagacious people to 
complaining neighbours (usually less well placed in the world than 
themselves), that they should "remain content in the station in 
which Providence has placed them." There are perhaps some cir- 
cumstances of life in which Providence has no intention that peo- 
ple should be content. Nevertheless, the maxim is on the whole 
a good one; but it is peculiarly for home use. That your neighbour 
should, or should not, remain content with his position, is not 



RELIGIOUS LESSONS IN POLITICAL ECONOMY 351 

your business; but it is very much your business to remain con- 
tent with your own. We need examples of people who, leaving 
Heaven to decide whether they are to rise in the world, decide 
for themselves that they will be happy in it, and have resolved 
to seek — not greater wealth, but simpler pleasure; not higher for- 
tune, but deeper felicity; making the first of possessions, self-pos- 
session; and honouring themselves in the harmless pride and calm 
pursuits of peace. — Essay IV, 



Ill 

MUNERA PULVERIS. 
Six Essays on Political Economy. (1861-72.) 

1. Definitions. 4. Commerce. 

2. Store-keeping. 5. Government. 

3. Coin-keeping. 6. Mastership. 

Mr. Ruskin claimed that these essays constituted "the first ac- 
curate analysis of the laws of Political Economy published in Eng- 
land. No exhaustive examination of the subject," he says, "was 
possible to any person unacquainted with the value of the products 
of the higher industries, commonly called the Tine Arts,' and no 
one acquainted with the nature of those industries has attempted, 
or even approached the task." 

Nevertheless the essays were received with outbursts of criticism 
and ridicule when first published in the Cornhill and Fraser's Maga- 
zines and it was not until ten years later, January, 1872, that they 
were published in book form, under the present title. 

But there were men who saw from the first, the true genius and 
prophetical forecasting of these "heretical doctrines" of Political 
Economy. Carlyle wrote to Ruskin in 1862: — "I have read your 
first, I approved in every particular, calm, definite, clear, rising into 
the sphere of Plato. ... In every part I find a high and noble 
sort of truth, not one doctrine that I can intrinsically dissent from, 
or count other than salutary in the extreme, and pressingly 
needed."^ Mr. Froude, the historian and Editor of Fraser, wrote: 
"The world talks of the article in its usual way. I was at Carlyle's 
last night. . . . He said that in writing to your father as to 
the subject, he had told him that when Solomon's temple was 
building it was credibly reported that at least 10,000 sparrows, 
sitting on the trees around, declared that it was wrong — quite con- 
trary to received opinion — hopelessly condemned by public opin- 
ion, etc. Nevertheless it got finished and the sparrows flew away 
and began to chirp in the same note about something else." 

1 See Collingwood's Life of Ruskin. 

352 



RELIGIOUS LESSONS IN POLITICAL ECONOMY 353 

In a more serious vein was a letter written to Carlyle on the sub- 
ject by Erskine/ "I am thankful for any unveiling of the so-called 
science of Political Economy, .according to which, avowed selfish- 
ness is the rule of the world. It is indeed most important preach- 
ing — to preach that there is not one God for religion and another 
God for human fellowship — and another God for buying and selling 
— that pestilent polytheism has been largely and confidently preached 
in our time, and blessed are those who can detect its mendacities, 
and help to disenchant the brethren of their power." 

In this volume we have Ruskin's definitions, in language adapted 
to the popular mind, of such terms as ''wealth, value, commerce, 
cost, price, money, work, ownership, slavery," etc. Replying to 
John Stuart Mills's statement that "everyone has a notion suffi- 
ciently correct for common purposes, of what is meant by wealth," 
he says: — "There is not one person in ten thousand who has a 
notion sufficiently correct, even for the commonest purposes, of 
what is meant by wealth, still less of what wealth everlastingly is, 
whether we mean it or not." 

Mr. Hobson, in his able review of the social and economical as- 
pects of Ruskin's work speaks of this as "the most systematic of 
his books. "^ The Author himself regarded it as a fitting work to in- 
scribe, "to the friend and guide who has urged me to all chief 
labor, THOMAS carlyle/' 

HARMONY OF BODY AND SOUL. 

6. No physical error can be more profound, no moral error more 
dangerous, than that involved in the monkish doctrine of the op- 
position of body and soul. No soul can be perfect in an imperfect 
body : no body perfect without perfect soul. Every right action and 
true thought sets the seal of its beauty on person and face; every 
wrong action and foul thought its seal of distortion ; and the various 
aspects of humanity might be read as plainly as printed history, 
were it not that the impressions are so complex that it must al- 
ways, in some cases (and in the present state of our knowledge, in 
all cases) be impossible to decipher them completely. Nevertheless, 
the face of a consistently unjust person, may always be rightly dis- 
tinguished at a glance ; and if the qualities are continued by descent 
through a generation or two, there arises a complete distinction of 
the race. . . . There is as yet no ascertained limit to the noble- 
ness of person and mind which the human creature may attain, 

1 See Oollingwood. ' John Ruskin, Social Reformer. 



354 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

by persevering observance of the laws of God respecting its birth 
and training. — Ch. 1. 

BY THE GOOD WE LIVE: BY THE BAD WE DIE. 

9. Neither with respect to things useful or useless can man's 
estimate of them alter their nature. Certain substances being good 
for his food and others noxious to him, what he thinks or wishes 
respecting them can neither change, nor prevent, their power. If 
he eats corn, he will live, if nightshade, he will die. If he pro- 
duce or make good and beautiful things, they will re-create him; 
(note the solemnity and weight of the word) ; if bad and ugly 
things, they will "corrupt" or "break in pieces" — that is, in the 
exact degree of their power, kill him. For every hour of labor, how- 
ever enthusiastic or well intended, which he spends for that which 
is not bread, so much possibility of life is lost to him. . . . Nature 
asks of him, calmly and inevitably, What have you found, or 
formed — the right thing or the wrong? By the right thing you 
shall live; by the wrong you shall die. — Ch. 1. 



HONESTY IS THE BEST POLICY. 

104. That proverb is wholly inapplicable to matters of private 
interest. It is not true that honesty, as far as material gain is con- 
cerned, profits individuals. A clever and cruel knave will in a 
mixed society always be richer than an honest person can be. But 
Honesty is the best "policy," if policy mean practice of State. For 
fraud gains nothing in a State. It only enables the knaves in it 
to live at the expense of honest people ; while there is for every act 
of fraud, however small, a loss of wealth to the community. What- 
ever the fraudulent person gains, some other person loses, as fraud 
produces nothing, and there is besides, the loss of time and thought 
spent in accomplishing the fraud, and of the strength otherwise 
obtainable by mutual help. . . . Practically, when the nation is 
deeply corrupt, cheat answers to cheat; everyone is in turn imposed 
upon, and there is to the body politic the dead loss of the ingenuity, 
together with the incalculable mischief of the injury to each de- 
frauded person producing collateral effect unexpectedly. My neigh- 
bour sells me bad meat. I sell him in return flawed iron. We 
neither of us get one atom of pecuniary advantage on the whole 
transaction, but we both suffer unexpected inconvenience; my men 
get scurvy, and his cattle-truck runs off the rails. — Chap. 4- 

Christ's method the best for the nation. 

108. The high ethical training of a nation Implies perfect Grace, 
Pitifulness, and Peace; it is irreconcilably inconsistent with filthy 
or mechanical employments, — with the desire of money, — and with 



RELIGIOUS LESSONS IN POLITICAL ECONOMY 355 

mental states of anxiety, jealousy, or indifference to pain. The 
present insensibility of the upper classes of Europe to the surround- 
ing aspects of suffering, uncleanness, and crime, binds them not 
only into one responsibility with the sin, but into one dishonor 
with the foulness, which rot at their thresholds. . . Similarly, 
the filth and poverty permitted or ignored in the midst of us are 
as dishonourable to the whole social body, as in the body natural 
it is to wash the face, but leave the hands and feet foul. Christ's 
way is the only true one, begin at the feet; the face will take care 
of itself. — Chap, 5. 



IV 

TIME AND TIDE. 
Twenty-five Letters and Ten Appendices. (1869.) 

Time and Tide consists of letters written to a working cork- 
cutter in England who corresponded with Mr. Ruskin. The coun- 
try was, at that time, agitated with questions of reform, including 
a demand for an extension of the political franchise, which was 
then so restricted that only owners of property, or large tax-payers 
could vote. 

Ruskin contributed much to the discussion, urging the impor- 
tance of moral honesty, in all things, as greater and of more value 
than political privilege or rights. In these letters also he advocated 
many changes peculiarly his own, notably, state regulation of mar- 
riage, labor by captains, etc; and in doing so he has given expres- 
sion to suggestions of reform which are of intense interest, — though! 
not all of them of practical application. (See Life, Chap. 4.) 

The letters are written in that free, frank style peculiar to Rus- 
kin and are full of wise words, — illustrated from real experience 
as reflected in the life of people; and make frequent use of Scrip- 
ture texts which are quoted as of final authority. 

The book was published December 19, 1869. The public demand 
for it was immediate, a month later a second edition was issued. 

The selections which follow here are in harmony with the pur- 
pose of our study, but they are not offered as a sufficient view of 
the moral value of Time and Tide. 

man's heritage. 

21. There are three things to which man is born — labour, and sor- 
row, and joy. Each of these three things has its baseness and its 
nobleness. There is base labour, and noble labour. There is base 
sorrow, and noble sorrow. There is base joy, and noble joy. But 
you must not think to avoid the corruption of these things by doing 
without the things themselves. Nor can any life be right that 
has not all three. Labour without joy is base. Labour without 

356 



RELIGIOUS LESSONS IN POLITICAL ECONOMY 357 

sorrow is base. Sorrow without labour is base. Joy without la- 
bour is base. — Letter V. 

HONESTY THE BASIS OF RELIGION AND POLICY. 

33. Your honesty is not to be based either on religion or policy. 
Both your religion and policy must be based on it. Your honesty 
must be based, as the sun is, in vacant heaven ; poised, as the lights 
in the firmament, which have rule over the day and over the night. 
If you ask why you are to be honest — you are, in the question it- 
self, dishonoured. _ "Because you are a man," is the only answer; 
and therefore I said in a former letter that to make your children 
capable of honesty is the beginning of education. Make them men 
first, and religious men afterwards, and all will be sound; but a 
knave's religion is always the rottenest thing about him. — Let- 
ier VIII. 

FOUR THEORIES ABOUT THE AUTHORITY OF THE BIBLE. 

35-88. All the theories possible to theological disputants respecting 
the Bible are resolvable into four, and four only. 

1. The first is that of the comparatively illiterate modern re- 
ligious world, namely, that every word of the book known to them 
as "The Bible," was dictated by the Supreme Being, and is in every 
syllable of it His "Word." This theory is of course tenable, though 
honestly, yet by no ordinarily well-educated person. 

2. The second theory is, that although admitting verbal error, 
the substance of the whole collection of books called the Bible is 
absolutely true, and furnished to man by Divine inspiration of the 
speakers and writers of it; and that every one who honestly and 
prayerfully seeks for such truth in it as is necessary for salva- 
tion, will infallibly find it there. 

This theory is that held by most of our good and upright clergy- 
men, and the better class of the professedly religious laity. 

3. The third theory is that the group of books which we call 
the Bible were neither written nor collected under any Divine 
guidance, securing them from substantial error; and that they con- 
tain, like all other human writings, false statements mixed with 
true, and erring thoughts mixed with just thoughts; but that they 
nevertheless relate, on the whole, faithfully, the dealings of the 
one God with the first races of man, and His dealings with them 
in aftertime through Christ; that they record true miracles, and 
bear true witness to the resurrection of the dead, and the life of 
the world to come. 

This is a theory held by many of the active leaders of modem 
thought in England. 

4. The fourth, and last possible theory is that the mass of re- 
ligious Scripture contains merely the best efforts which we hither- 
to know to have been made by any of the races of men towards 



35S THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

the discovery of some relations with the spiritual world; that they 
are only trustworthy as expressions of the enthusiastic visions or 
beliefs of earnest men oppressed by the w^orld's darkness, and have 
no more authoritative claim on our faith than the religious specu- 
lations and histories of the Egyptians, Greeks, Persians, and In- 
dians; but are, in common with all these, to be reverently studied, 
as containing the best wisdom which human intellect, earnestly 
seeking for help from great Egyptian, Greek, and Indian, enjoins 
these also. You know besides, that through all the mysteries of 
human fate and history, this one great law of fate is written on 
the walls of cities, or in their dust, — written in letters of light or 
in letters of blood, — that where truth, temperance, and equity have 
been preserved, all strength, and peace, and joy have been pre- 
served also ; — that where lying, lasciviousness, and covetousness have 
been practised, there has followed an infallible, and for centuries 
irrecoverable, ruin. And you know, lastly, that the observance of 
this common law of righteousness, commending itself to all the 
pure instincts of men, and fruitful in their temporal good, is by 
the religious writers of every nation, and chiefly in this venerated 
Scripture of ours, connected with some distinct hope of better life, 
and righteousness, to come. 

"Let it not then offend you if, deducing principles of action first 
from the laws and facts of nature, I nevertheless fortify them also 
by appliance of the precepts, or suggestive and probable teachings 
of this Book, of which the authority is over many around you, 
more distinctly than over you, and which confessing to be divine, 
they, at least, can only disobey at their moral peril," — Letter VIII. 

DISHONEST TRADING. 

77. No religion that ever was preached on this earth of God's round- 
ing, ever proclaimed any salvation to sellers of bad goods. If the 
Ghost that is in you, whatever the essence of it, leaves your hand 
a juggler's and your heart a cheat's, it is not a Holy Ghost, be 
assured of that. And for the rest, all political economy, as well 
as all higher virtue, depends jirst on sound work. 

Let your laws then, I say, in the beginning, be set to secure 
this. You cannot make punishment too stern for subtle knavery. 
Keep no truce with this enemy, whatever pardon you extend to 
more generous ones. For light weights and false measures, or for 
proved adulteration or dishonest manufacture of article, the pen- 
alty should be simply confiscation of goods, and sending out of the 
country. The kind of person who desires prosperity by such prac- 
tices, could not be made to "emigrate" too speedily. What to do 
"with him in the place you appointed to be blessed by his presence, 
iwe will in time consider. — Letter XIV. 



RELIGIOUS LESSONS IN POLITICAL ECONOMY 359 

THEFT, THE WORST OF CRIMES. 

85.1 happened to be reading this morning (29th March) some 
portions of the Lent services, and I came to a pause over the familiar 
words, "And with Him they crucified two thieves." Have you ever 
considered (I speak to you now as a professing Christian), why, 
in the accompHshment of the "numbering among transgressors," 
the transgressors chosen should have been especially thieves — not 
murderers, nor, as far as we know, sinners by any gross violence? 
Do you observe how the sin of theft is again and again indicated 
as the chiefly antagonistic one to the law of Christ? "This he said, 
not that he cared for the poor, but because he was a thief, and had 
the bag" (of Judas). And again, though Barabbas was a leader 
of sedition, and a murderer besides — (that the popular election 
might be in all respects perfect) — yet St. John, in curt and con- 
clusive account of him, fastens again' on the theft. "Then cried 
they all again saying, Not this man, but Barabbas. Now Barabbas 
was a robber." I believe myself the reason to be that theft is 
indeed, in its subtle forms, the most complete and excuseless of 
human crimes. Sins of violence usually have passion to excuse 
them: they may be the madness of moments; or they may be ap- 
parently the only means of extrication from calamity. In other 
cases, they are the diseased habits of lower and brutified natures. 
But theft involving deliberative intellect, and absence of passion, 
is the purest type of wilful iniquity, in persons capable of doing 
right. Which being so, it seems to be fast becoming the practice 
of modern society to crucify its Christ indeed, as willingly as ever, 
in the persons of His poor; but by no means now to crucify its 
thieves beside Him ! It elevates its thieves after another fashion ; 
sets them upon an hill, that their light may shine before men, and 
that all may see their good works, and glorify their Father, in — 
the Opposite of Heaven. 

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT. 

86. Crime cannot be hindered by punishment : it will always find 
some shape and outlet, unpunishable or unclosed. Crime can only, 
be truly hindered by letting no man grow up a criminal — by tak- 
ing away the will to commit sin ; not by mere punishment of its 
commission. Crime, small and great, can only be truly stayed by 
education — not the education of the intellect only, which is, on 
some men, wasted, and for others mischievous; but education of 
the heart, which is alike good and necessary for all. — Letter XV. 

THE philosopher's STONE. 

88. Did you ever hear anything else so ill-named as the phantom 
called the "Philosopher's" Stone? A talisman that shall turn base 
metal into precious metal, nature acknowledges not; nor would any 



36o THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

but fools seek after it. But a talisman to turn base souls into noble 
souls, nature has given us! and that is a "Philosopher's" Stone 
indeed, but it is a stone which the builders refuse. 

If there were two valleys in California or Australia, with two 
different kinds of gravel in the bottom of them, and in the one 
stream bed you could dig up, occasionally and by good fortune, 
nuggets of gold; and in the other stream bed, certainly and with- 
out hazard, you could dig up little caskets, containing talismans 
which gave length of days and peace; and alabaster vases of pre- 
cious balms, which were better than the Arabian Dervish's oint- 
ment, and made not only the eyes to see, but the mind to know, 
whatever it would — I wonder in which of the stream beds there 
would be most diggers? — Letter XVI . 

TIME IS MONEY. 

90. "Time is money"- — so say your practised merchants and econo- 
mists. None of them, however, I fancy, as they draw towards 
death, find that the reverse is true and that "money is time?" Per- 
haps it might be better for them in the end if they did not turn so 
much of their time into money, as no retransformation is possible! 
There are other things, however, which in the same sense are 
money, or can e changed into it, as well as time. Health is money, 
wit is money, knowledge is money; and all your health, and wit, 
and knowledge may be changed for gold; and the happy goal so 
reached, of a sick, insane, and blind, auriferous old age; but the 
gold cannot be changed in its turn back into health and wit. 

"Time is money," the words tingle in my ears so that I can't 
go on writing. Is it nothing better, then ? If we could thoroughly 
understand that time was — itself, — would it not be more to the 
purpose? A thing of which loss or gain was absolute loss, and 
perfect gain. And that it was expedient also to buy health and 
knowledge with money, if so purchaseable ; but not to buy money 
with themf— Letter XVI. 

Christ's teaching about money. 

174. First, have you observed that all Christ's main teachings, by 
direct order, by earnest parable, and by His own permanent emo- 
tion, regard the use and misuse of money? We might have thought, 
if we had been asked what a divine teacher was most likely to 
teach, that He would have left inferior persons^ to give directions 
about money; and Himself spoken only concerning faith and love, 
and the discipline of the passions, and the guilt of the crimes of 
soul against soul. But not so. He speaks in general terms of these. 
But He does not speak parables about them for all men's memory, 
nor permit Himself fierce indignation against them, in all men's 
sight. The Pharisees bring Him an adulteress. He writes her 



RELIGIOUS LESSONS IN POLITICAL ECONOMY 361 

forgiveness on the dust of which he had formed her. Another, 
despised of all for known sin, He recognized as a giver of unknown 
love. But He acknowledges no love in buyers and sellers in His 
house. One should have thought there were people in that house 
twenty times worse than they ; — Caiaphas and his like — false priests, 
false prayer-makers, false leaders of the people — who needed put- 
ting to silence, or to flight, with c'arkest wrath. But the scourge 
is only against the traffickers and thieves. The two most intense of 
all the parables: the two which lead the rest in love and in terror 
(this of the Prodigal, and of Dives) relate, both of them, to man- 
agement of riches. The practical order given to the only seeker 
of advice, of whom it is recorded that Christ "loved him," is briefly 
about his property. "Sell that thou hast." 

And the arbitrament of the day of Last Judgment is made to 
rest wholly, neither on belief in God, nor in any spiritual virtue 
in man, nor on freedom from stress of stormy crime, but on this 
only, "I was an hungered and ye gave me drink; naked, and ye 
clothed me; sick, and ye came unto me." 

THE PRODIGAL SON. 

175. "Well, then, the first thing to notice in the parable of the 
Prodigal Son (and the last thing which people usually do notice 
in it), is — that it is about a Prodigal! He begins by asking 
for his share of his father's goods; he gets it, carries it off, and 
wastes it. It is true that he wastes it in riotous living, but you 
are not asked to notice in what kind of riot : He spends it with har- 
lots — but it is not the harlotry which his elder brother accuses 
him of mainly, but of having devoured his father's living. Nay, 
it is not the sensual life which he accuses himself of — or which the 
manner of his punishment accuses him of. But the wasteful life. 
It is not said that he had become debauched in soul, or diseased 
in body, by his vice; but that at last he would fain have filled 
his belly with husks, and could not. It is not said that he was 
struck with remorse for the consequences of his evil passions, but 
only that he remembered there was bread enough and to spare, even 
for the servants, at home. 

GETTING INTO DEBT. 

Do not think I want to extenuate sins of passion (though, in 
very truth, the sin of Magdalene is a light one compared to that of 
Judas) ; but observe, sins of passion, if of real passion, are often the 
errors and back-falls of noble souls; but prodigality is mere and 
pure selfishness, and essentially the sin of an ignoble or undeveloped 
creature; and I would rather, ten times rather, hear of a youth that 
(certain degrees of temptation and conditions of resistance being 
understood) he had fallen into any sin you chose to name, of all 



362 THE RELIGION OF RUSK IN 

the mortal ones, than that he was in the habit of running bills 
which he could not pay. 

THE CROWNING SINS. 

Farther, though I hold that the two crowning and most accursed 
sins of the society of this present day are the carelessness with 
which it regards the betrayal of women, and brutality with which 
it suffers the neglect of children, both these head and chief crimes, 
and all others, are rooted first in abuse of the laws, and neglect of 
the duties, concerning wealth. And thus the love of money, with 
the parallel (and, observe, mathematically commensurate looseness 
in management of it), the "mal tener," followed necessarily by the 
"mal dare," is, indeed, the root of all evil. — Letter XXV. 

THE prodigal's CONFESSION. 

176. Secondly, I want you to note that when the prodigal comes 
to his senses, he complains of nobody but himself, and speaks of 
no un worthiness but his own. He says nothing against any of the 
women who tempted him — nothing against the citizen who left 
him to feed on husks — nothing of the false friends of whom "no 
man gave unto him" — above all, nothing of the "corruption of 
human nature," or the corruption of things in general. He says 
that he himself is unworthy, as distinguished from honourable per- 
sons, and that he himself has sinned, as distinguished from right- 
eous persons. And that is the hard lesson to learn, and the begin- 
ning of faithful lessons. All right and fruitful humility, and 
purging of Heart, and seeing of God, is in that. It is easy to call 
yourself the chief of sinners, expecting every sinner round you to 
decline — or return — the compliment; but learn to measure the real 
degrees of your own relative baseness, and to be ashamed, not in 
heaven's sight, but in man's sight ; and redemption is indeed begun. 
Observe the phrase, I have sinned "against heaven," against the 
great law of that, and before thee, visibly degraded before my hu- 
man sire and guide, unworthy any more of being esteemed of his 
blood, and desirous only of taking the place I deserve among his 
servants. — Letter XXV. 

THE MEANING OF THE PARABLE. 

177. Now, I do not doubt but that I shall set many a reader's teeth 
on edge by what he will think my carnal and material rendering 
of this "beautiful" parable. But I am just as ready to spiritualize 
it as he is, provided I am sure first that we understand it. If we 
want to understand the parable of the sower, we must first think of 
it as of literal husbandry; if we want to understand the parable of 
the prodigal, we must first understand it as of literal prodigality. 



RELIGIOUS LESSONS IN POLITICAL ECONOMY 363 

And the story has also for us a precious lesson in this literal sense 
of it, namely this, which I have been urging upon you through- 
out these letters, that all redemption must begin in subjection, and 
in the recovery of the sense of Fatherhood and authority, as all 
ruin and desolation begin in the loss of that sense. The lost son be- 
gan by claiming his rights. He is found when he resigns them. 
He is lost by flying from his father, when his father's authority w^as 
only paternal. He is found by returning to his father, and desir- 
ing that his authority may be absolute, as over a hired stranger. 

GOD AND MAMMON. 

180. And now — but one word more — either for you, or any other 
readers who may be startled at what I have been saying as to the 
peculiar stress laid by the Founder of our religion on right deal- 
ing with wealth. Let them be assured that it is with no fortui- 
tous choice among the attributes or powers of evil, that "Mammon" 
is assigned for the direct adversary of the Master whom they are 
bound to serve. You cannot, by any artifice of reconciliation, be 
God's soldier, and his. Nor while the desire of gain is within your 
heart, can any true knowledge of the Kingdom of God come there. 
No one shall enter its stronghold, — no one receive its blessing, ex- 
cept, "he that hath clean hands and a pure heart;" clean hands, 
that have done no cruel deed; — pure heart, that knows no base de- 
sire. And, therefore, in the highest spiritual sense that can be given 
to words, be assured, not respecting the literal temple of stone and 
gold, but of the living temple of your body and soul, that no re- 
demption, nor teaching, nor hallowing, will be anywise possible for 
it, until these two verses have been, for it also, fulfilled: — 

"And He went into the temple, and began to cast out them that 
sold therein, and them that bought. And He taught daily in the 
temple."— Le^er- XXV. 



THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
(1866-73.) 

This is Mr. Ruskin's title of a volume consisting of three lec- 
tures: (1) Work. (2) Traffic. (3) War. To these were added, in 
1873, a fourth lecture on The Future of England and also a trea- 
tise called, Notes on the Political Economy of Prussia. 

It should be assumed that every lover of good English litera- 
ture will have at least seen, if not read, the first three lectures, 
since copies of the book containing them may be found in many 
of the series of cheap reprints. In these reprints, however, so far as 
we have seen, the last two subjects are not given, but they may be 
found in any good edition of the works of Ruskin. They are here 
treated (as evidently designed by the Author) as part of the work 
bearing the title of "The Crown of Wild Olive." 

We have made a few selections from the first lecture which is 
remarkable, among other things, for frequent quotation of Script- 
ure. The other three lectures must be read, in the full text of them, 
in order to appreciate the fine and striking passages which occur. 
Some of them indeed are incoherent, if not wild, if read by them- 
selves, apart from the general thought and argument. 

Never, perhaps, were any gatherings of people more astonished 
at the words of an invited lecturer, than when Ruskin responded 
to the mercantile town of Bradford and the military quarters at 
Woolwich. The Bradford people hoped for some suggestions from 
the great art teacher on Architecture which might prove an inspira- 
tion for their contemplated Temple of Commerce. Instead, he gave 
them a picture of an ideal temple of the "Goddess of Getting-on," 
in which he vigorously criticised the methods of the commercial 
world. "There's a great difference," he said, "between 'winning' 
money and 'making' it; a great difference between getting it out of 
another man's pocket into ours, or filling both. Collecting money 
is by no means that same thing as making it; the tax-gatherer's 

364 



RELIGIOUS LESSONS IN POLITICAL ECONOMY 365 

house is not the mint; and much of the apparent gain (so-called) 
in commerce, is only a form of taxation on carriage or exchange." 

To the soldiers at Woolwich Ruskin read such a lecture on the 
moral relations of the governing classes and the professional sol- 
dier as they had never dreamed of hearing. 

Such outbursts of forceful lecturing could not, of course, be 
resented; they had asked for a fish, — he did not give them a stone, 
but a swordfish, — food for thought and weapon for self-conquest. 

To the victor in the Olympic games at Greece was awarded the 
mild olive, — token of conquest. To Ruskin it implied "the crown of 
consummate honour," and its significance is set forth in the clos- 
ing passage of his introduction. Having addressed Christian be- 
lievers on their inconsistencies in view of their faith in immor- 
tality, he turns to those who deny the after life with the following 
inspiring words of appeal: — 

"If all the peace and power and joy you can ever win, must be 
won now; and all fruit of victory gathered here, or never — will you 
still, throughout the puny totality of your life, weary yourselves 
in the fire of vanity? If there is no rest which remaineth for you, 
is there none you might presently take? was this grass of the earth 
made green for your shroud only, not for your bed? and can you 
never lie down upon it, but only under it? The heathen, to W'hose 
creed you have returned, thought not so. They knew that life 
brought its contest, but they expected from it also the crown of 
all contest. No proud one! no jeweled circlet flaming through 
Heaven above the height of the unmerited throne, only some few 
leaves of wild olive, cool to the tired brow, through a few years 
of peace. It should have been of gold, they thought; but Jupiter 
was poor: this was the best the god could give them. Seeking a 
greater than this, they had known it a mockery. Not in war, not 
in wealth, not in tyranny, was there any happiness to be found 
for them — only in kindly peace, fruitful and free. The wreath was 
to be of wild olive, mark you — the tree that grows carelessly, tuft- 
ing the rocks with no vivid bloom, no verdure of branch; only 
with soft snow of blossom, and scarcely fulfilled fruit, mixed with 
gray leaf and thorn-set stem; no fastening of diadem for you but 
with such sharp embroidery! But this, such as it is, you may win 
while yet you live; type of gray honour and sweet rest. Free- 
heartedness, and graciousness, and undisturbed trust and requited 
love, and the sight of the peace of others, and the ministry to their 



366 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

pain — these, and the blue sky above you, and the sweet waters and 
flowers of the earth beneath; and mysteries and presences, innu- 
merable, of living things — these may yet be here your riches; un- 
tormenting and divine: serviceable for the life that now is; nor, 
it may be, without promise of that which is to come." 

WORK GREATER THAN WEALTH. 

32. There will be al^\^ys men who would fain set themselves 
to the accumulation of wealth as the sole object of their lives. 
Necessarily, that class of men is an uneducated class, inferior in 
intellect, and more or less cowardly. It is physically impossible 
for a well-educated, intellectual, or brave man to make money the 
chief object of his thoughts; as physically impossible as it is for 
him to make his dinner the principal object of them. All healthy 
people like their dinners, but their dinner is not the main object 
of their lives. So all healthily minded people like making money 
— ought to like it, and to enjoy the sensation of winning it; but 
the main object of their life is not money; it is something better 
than money. A good soldier, for instance, mainly wishes to do his 
fighting well. He is glad of his pay — very properly so, and justly 
grumbles when you keep him ten years without it — still, his main 
notion of life is to win battles, not to be paid for winning them. 
So of clergymen. They like pew-rents, and baptismal fees, of course ; 
but yet, if they are brave and well educated, the pew-rent is not the 
sole object of their lives, and the baptismal fee is not the sole pur- 
pose of the baptism ; the clergyman's object is essentially to baptize 
and preach, not to be paid for preaching. So of doctors. They like 
fees no doubt — ought to like them: yet if they are brave and well 
educated, the entire object of their lives is not fees. They, on the 
whole, desire to cure the sick; and — if they are good doctors, and 
the choice were fairly put to them — would rather cure their patient, 
and lose their fee, than kill him, and get it. And so with all other 
brave and rightly trained men ; their work is first, their fee second 
— very important always, but still second. But in every nation, as 
I said, there are a vast class who are ill-educated, cowardly, and 
more or less stupid. And w^ith these people, just as certainly the 
fee is first, and the work second, as with brave people the work is 
first and the fee second. And this is no small distinction. It is 
the whole distinction in a man ; distinction between life and death 
in him, between heaven and hell for him. You cannot serve two 
masters — you must serve one or other. . . , And it makes a differ- 
ence, now and ever, believe me, whether you serve Him who has on 
His vesture and thigh written, "King of Kings," and whose service 
is perfect freedom ; or him on whose vesture and thigh the name is 
written, "Slave of Slaves," and whose service is perfect slavery. — 
Led. I. 



RELIGIOUS LESSONS IN POLITICAL ECONOMY 367 

THE SIN OF JUDAS. GRAFT. 

33. In every nation there are, and must always be a cer- 
tain number of these Fiend's servants, who have it principally for 
the object of their lives to make money. They are always, as I 
said, more or less stupid, and cannot conceive of anything else so 
nice as money. Stupidity is always the basis of the Judas bargain. 
We do great injustice to Iscariot, in thinking him wicked above all 
common wickedness. He was only a common money-lover, and, 
like all money-lovers, didn't understand Christ — couldn't make out 
the worth of Him, or meaning of Him. He didn't want Him to 
be killed. He was horror-struck when he found that Christ would 
be killed; threw his money away instantly, and hanged himself. 
How many of our present money-seekers, think you, would have 
the grace to hang themselves, whoever was killed? But Judas was 
a common, selfish, muddle-headed, pilfering fellow; his hand al- 
ways in the bag of the poor, not caring for them. He didn't under- 
stand Christ — yet believed in Him, much more than most of us 
do ; had seen Him do miracles, thought He was quite strong enough 
to shift for Himself, and he, Judas, might as well make his own 
little by-perquisites out of the affair. Christ would come out of it 
well enough, and he have his thirty pieces. Now, that is the money- 
seeker's idea, all over the world. He doesn't hate Christ, but can't 
understand Him — doesn't care for Him — sees no good in that be- 
nevolent business; makes his own little job out of it at all events, 
come what will. And thus, out of every mass of men, you have 
a certain number of bag-men — your "fee-first" men, whose main 
object is to make money. And they do make it — make it in all 
sorts of unfair ways, chiefly by the w^eight and force of money 
itself or what is called the power of capital; that is to say, the 
power which money, once obtained, has over the labour of the 
poor, so that the capitalist can take all its produce to himself, except 
the labourer's food. That is the modern Judas's way of "carrying 
the bag," and "bearing what is put therein." — Led. I. 

"do justice and judgment." 

39. It is the law of heaven that you shall not be able to judge 
what is wise or easy, unless you are first resolved to judge what is 
just, and to do it. That is the thing constantly reiterated by our 
Master — the order of all others that is given oftenest — "Do justice 
and judgment." That's your Bible order; that's the "Service of 
God," not praying nor psalm-singing. You are told, indeed, to sing 
psalms when you are merry, and to pray when you need anything; 
and, by the perversion of the Evil Spirit, we get to think that 
praying and psalm-singing are "service." If a child finds itself in 
want of anything, it runs in and asks its father for it — does it call 
that, doing its father a service? If it begs for a toy or a piece of 



368 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

cake — does it call that serving its father? That, with God, is prayer, 
and He likes to hear it: He likes you to ask Him for cake when 
you want it; but He doesn't call that "serving Him." Begging is 
not serving: God likes mere beggars as little as you do — He likes 
honest servants, not beggars. So when a child loves its father very 
much, and is very happy, it may sing little songs about him, but 
it doesn't call that serving its father; neither is singing songs about 
God, serving God. It is enjoying ourselves, if it's anything; more 
probably it is nothing; but if it's anything, it is serving ourselves, 
not God. And yet we are impudent enough to call our beggings 
and chantings "Divine Service:" we say "Divine service will be 
'performed' " (that's our word — the form of it gone through) "at 
eleven o'clock." Alas! — unless we perform Divine service in every 
willing act of our life, we never perform it at all. The one Divine 
work — the one ordered sacrifice — is to do justice; and it is the 
last we are ever inclined to do. Anything rather than that ! As much 
charity as you choose, but no justice. "Nay," you will say, "chari- 
ty is greater than justice." Yes, it is greater; it is the summit of 
justice — it is the temple of which justice is the foundation. But 
you can't have the top -Rdthout the bottom ; you cannot build upon 
charity. You must build upon justice, for this main reason, that 
you have not, at first, charity to build with. It is the last reward of 
good work. Do justice to your brother (you can do that, whether 
you love him or not), and you will come to love him. But do in- 
justice to him, because you don't love him; and you will come to 
hate him. — Led. I. 

WORK ^ITH GOD IS WISE WORK. 

Wise work is, briefly, work with God. Foolish work is work 
against God. And work done with God, which He will help, may 
be briefly described as "Putting in Order" — that is, enforcing God's 
law of order, spiritual and material, over men and things. The 
first thing you have to do, essentially ; the real "good work" is, with 
respect to men, to enforce justice, and with respect to things, to 
enforce tidiness, and fruitfulness. And against these two great 
human deeds, justice and order, there are perpetually two great 
demons contending — the devil of iniquity, or inequitj^, and the 
devil of disorder, or of death; for death is only consummation of 
disorder. You have to fight these two fiends daily. So far as you 
don't fight against the fiend of iniquity, you work for him. You 
"work iniquity," and the judgment upon you, for all your "Lord, 
Lord's," will be "Depart from me, ye that w^ork iniquity." And 
so far as you do not resist the fiend of disorder, you work disorder, 
and you yourself do the work of Death, which is sin, and has for 
its wages. Death himself. — Lect. I. 



RELIGIOUS LESSONS IN POLITICAL ECONOMY 369 

"thy kingdom come/' 

46. If we hear a man swear in the streets, we think it very wrongs 
and say he "takes God's name in vain." But there's a twenty 
times worse way of taking His name in vain than that. It is to 
ask God for what we don't want. He doesn't Hke that sort of prayer. 
If you don't want a thing, don't ask for it: such asking is the 
worst mockery of your King you can mock Him with; the soldiers 
striking Him on the head with the* reed was nothing to that. If 
you do not wish for His kingdom, don't pray for it. But if you 
do, you must do more than pray for it ; you must work for it. And, 
to work for it, you must know what it is: we have all prayed for 
it many a day without thinking. Observe, it is a kingdom that 
is to come to us; we are not to go to it. Also, it is not to be a 
kingdom of the dead, but of the living. Also, it is not to come all 
at once, but quietly; nobody knows how. "The kingdom of God 
Cometh not with observation." Also, it is not to come outside of 
us, but in the hearts of us: "the kingdom of God is within you." 
And, being within us, it is not a thing to be seen, but to be felt; 
and though it brings all substance of good with it, it does not con- 
sist in that: "the kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but right- 
eousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost:" joy, that is to say, 
in the holy, healthful, and helpful Spirit. Now, if we want to work 
for this kingdom, and to bring it, and enter into it, there's just 
one condition to be first accepted. You must enter it as children, 
or not at all; "Whosoever will not receive it as a little child shall 
not enter therein." And again, "SufiFer little children to come 
unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of 
heaven." 

47. Of such, observe. Not of children themselves, but of such as 
children. I believe most mothers who read that text think that 
all heaven is to be full of babies. But that's not so. There will 
be children there, but the hoary head is the crown. "Length of 
days, and long life and peace," that is the blessing, not to die in 
babyhood. Children die but for their parents' sin; God means 
them to live, but He can't let them always; then they have their 
earlier place in heaven : and the little child of David, vainly prayed 
for; the little child of Jeroboam, killed by its mother's step on its 
own threshold — they will be there. But weary old David, and 
weary old Barzillai, having learned children's lessons at last, will 
be there too, and the one question for us all, young or old, is, 
have we learned our child's lesson? it is the character of children 
we want, and must gain at our peril; let us see, briefly, in what it 
consists. — Lect. I. 

CHILDHOOD CHARACTER. 

The first character of right childhood is that it is Modest. A 
well-bred child does not think it can teach its parents, or that it 



370 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

knows everything. It may think its father and mother knows every- 
thing — perhaps that all grown-up people know everything; — very 
certainly it is sure that it does not. And it is always asking ques- 
tions, and wanting to know more. Well, that is the first charac- 
ter of a good and wise man at his work. To know that he knows 
very little — to perceive that there are many above him wiser than 
he; and to be always asking questions, wanting to learn, not to 
teach. 

48. The second character of right childhood is to be Faithful: 
Perceiving that its father knows best what is good for it, and hav- 
ing found always, when it has tried its own way against his, that 
he was right and it was wrong, a noble child trusts him at last 
wholly, gives him its hand, and will walk blindfold with him, if he 
bids it. And that is the true character of all good men also, as 
obedient workers, or soldiers under captains. They know their 
captain : where he leads they must follow, what he bids, they must 
do; and without this trust and faith, without this captainship and 
soldiership, no great deed, no great salvation, is possible to man. 
It was a deed of this absolute trust which made Abraham the fa- 
ther of the faithful; it was the declaration of the power of God 
as captain over all men, and the acceptance of a leader appointed 
by Him as commander of the faithful, which laid the foundation 
of whatever national power yet exists in the East; and the deed of 
the Greeks, which has become the type of unselfish and noble 
soldiership to all lands, and to all times, was commemorated, on 
the tomb of those who gave their lives to do it, in the most pa- 
thetic, so far as I know, or can feel, of all human utterances: "Oh, 
stranger, go and tell our people that we are lying here, having 
obeyed their words." 

49. The third character of right childhood is to be Loving and 
Generous. Give a little love to a child, and you get a great deal 
back. It loves everything near it, when it is a right kind of child — 
would hurt nothing, would give the best it has away, always, if 
you need it — does not lay plans for getting everything in the house 
for itself, and delights in helping people; you cannot please it 
so much as by giving it a chance of being useful, in ever so little a 
way. 

50. Because of all these characters, lastly, it is Cheerful. Put- 
ting its trust in its father, it is careful for nothing — being full of 
love to every creature, it is happy always, whether in its play or 
in its duty. Well, that's the great w^orker's character also. Tak- 
ing no thought for the morrow; taking thought only for the duty 
of the day; trusting somebody else to take care of to-morrow; know- 
ing indeed what labour is, but not what sorrow is ; and always ready 
for play — beautiful play — for lovely human play is like the play of 
the Sun. There's a worker for you. He, steady to his time, is 
set as a strong man to run his course, but also, he rejoiceth as a 



RELIGIOUS LESSONS IN POLITICAL ECONOMY 371 

strong man to run his course. See how he plays in the morning, 
with the mists below, and the clouds above, with a ray here and 
a flash there, and a shower of jewels everywhere — that's the Sun's 
play ; and great human play is like his — all various — all full of light 
and life, and tender, as the dew of the morning. 

So then, you have the child's character in these four things — 
Humility, Faith, Charity, and Cheerfulness. That's what you 
have got to be converted to. "Except ye be converted and become as 
little children." — Led. I. 

THE IDOL OF EICHES. 

84. This idol, forbidden to us, first of all idols, by our Master 
and faith; forbidden to us also by every human lip that has ever, 
in any age or people, been accounted of as able to speak accord- 
ing to the purposes of God. Continue to make that forbidden deity 
your principal one, and soon no more art, no more science, no 
more pleasure will be possible. Catastrophe will come; or worse 
than catastrophe, slow moldering and withering into Hades. But 
if you can fix some conception of a true human state of life to 
be striven for — life for all men as for yourselves; if you can deter- 
mine some honest and simple order of existence; following those 
trodden ways of wisdom, which are pleasantness, and seeking her 
quiet and withdrawn paths, which are peace; then, and so sancti- 
fying wealth unto "commonwealth," all your art, your literature, 
your daily labors, your domestic affection, and citizen's duty, will 
join and increase into one magnificent harmony. You will know 
then how to build, well enough ; you will build with stone well but 
with flesh better; temples not made with hands, but riveted of 
hearts; and that kind of marble, crimson-veined, is indeed eter- 
nal. — Led. II. 

THE WASTE AND VICE OF BETTING. 

127. There is one way of wasting time, of all the vilest, because it 
w^astes, not time only, but the interest and energy of your minds. 
Of all the ungentlemanly habits into which you can fall, the 
vilest is betting, or interesting yourselves in the issues of betting. It 
unites nearly every condition of folly and vice: you concentrate 
your interest upon a matter of chance, instead of upon a subject 
of true knowledge; and you back opinions which you have no 
grounds for forming, merely because they are your own. All the 
insolence of egotism is in this ; and so far as the love of excitement 
is complicated with the hope of winning money, you turn your- 
selves into the basest sort of tradesmen — those who live by specu- 
lation. Were there no other ground for industry, this would be 
a sufficient one; that it protected you from the temptation to so 
scandalous a vice. Work faithfully, and you will put yourselves in 
possession of a glorious and enlarging happiness; not such as can 



372 TEE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

he won by the speed of a horse, or marred by the obliquity of a 
hall— Led. III. 

BIBLE INJUNCTIONS TO WOMEN. 

131. If you choose to obey your Bibles, you will not care who at- 
tacks them. It is just because you never fulfil a single downright 
precept of the Book, that you are so careful for its credit: and 
just because you don't care to obey its whole words, that you are 
so particular about the letters of them. The Bible tells you to 
dress plainly — and you are mad for finery; the Bible tells you to 
have pity on the poor — and you crush them under your carriage- 
wheels ; the Bible tells you to do judgment and justice — and you do 
not know, nor care to know, so much as what the Bible word ''jus- 
tice" means. Do but learn so much of God's truth as that comes 
to; know what He means when He tells you to be just: and teach 
your sons, that their bravery is but a fool's boast, and their deeds 
but a firebrand's tossing, unless they are indeed Just men, and 
Perfect in the Fear of God; and you will soon have no more war, 
unless it be indeed such as it is willed by Him, of whom, though 
Prince of Peace, it is also written, "In Righteousness He doth judge, 
and make war." — Led. III. 



VI 

FORS CLAVIGERA. 

Letters to the Workmen and Laborers of Great Britain. 

Four Volumes. (1871-80.) 

Here we find Ruskin, in all his many varied moods and char- 
acteristics. If we would know him as he is, — now in a quiet, 
friendly fashion, writing as one might do to a companion, — then 
bursting into a perfect hurricane of passionate protest against some 
great wrong or evil; again, arguing out some question of right 
statement, or perhaps vigorously throwing down the gage of battle 
against some philosopher's doctrine; or again, moved by the read- 
ing of his morning paper, he describes some social horror or tragic 
death, in terms as graphic and even more forcible than Hood's 
"Bridge of Sighs;" or, perhaps, he thunders with a prophet's tongue 
against the inequalities and crimes of political or governmental 
policy; — now writing in flowing, poetic language which reminds 
one of Wordsworth, and now pouring forth anathemas as drastic 
and ironic as Carlyle; — now full of story and simple tale, — then 
humorous and sarcastic, or sympathetic and tender, as the sub- 
ject moves him; if, we repeat, we would see Ruskin in all these 
moods, and yet find him sincere, reverent and Scriptural, we must 
read Fors Clavigera. 

These four (sometimes divided into eight) volumes, making a 
total of 1726 pages (430, 460, 424, 412), contain 96 letters. The 
letters were begun on January 1st, 1871, and were at first pub- 
lished monthly, but this arrangement was not sustained regularly 
through the whole series. Letters XC to XCVI were appended two 
years after the general series was closed, the interruption being oc- 
casioned by sickness. 

We will let Mr. Ruskin himself explain the title, which he does 
in the second letter: 

"Fors is the best part of three good English words. Force, Forti- 
tude, and Fortune. I wish you to know the meaning of those 
three words accurately. 

373 



374 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

Force, (in humanity), means power of doing good work. A 
fool, or a corpse, can do any quantity of mischief; but only a wise 
and strong man, or, with what true vital force there is in him, a 
weak one, can do good. 

Fortitude means the power of bearing necessary pain, or trial 
of patience, whether by time, or temptation. 

Fortune means the necessary fate of a man: the ordinance of 
his life which cannot be changed. To 'make your Fortune' is to 
rule that appointed fate to the best ends of which it is capable. 

Fors is a feminine word; and Clavigera is, therefore, the femi- 
nine of Claviger. 

Clava means a club. Clavis, a key. Clavus, a nail, or a rudder. 

Gero means I carry. It is the root of our word gesture (the way 
you carry yourself) ; and, in a curious byeway, of jest. 

Clavigera may mean, therefore, either Club-bearer, Key-bearer, 
or Nail-bearer. 

Each of these three possible meanings of Clavigera corresponds 
to one of the three meanings of Fors. 

Fors, the Club-bearer, means the strength of Hercules or of Deed. 

Fors, the Key-bearer, means the strength of Ulysses, or of Pa- 
tience. 

Fors, the Nail-bearer, means the strength of Lycurgus, or of 
Law." 

These unique letters are of absorbing interest from many points 
of view. They reveal so much of the author's deepest feeling and 
broad humanitarian benevolence. They are made the medium of 
advocacy and exposition of the St. George's Guild, containing quite 
a cyclopedia of information as to its purpose, plans, and progress. 
They contain reviews of Euskin's own studies, with sketches and 
stories and lives of men; one sees Soott and Carlyle and Emerson 
and Tennyson as Ruskin saw them. 

These letters are, as Harrison points out, "fantastic, wayward, 
egotistic, as in no other book in our language. Fors is Ruskin's 
Hamlet ; it is also his Apocalypse. ... In all these two thousand 
pages of the four volumes, dealing with things as miscellaneous and 
diverse as the words in the Standard Dictionary of the English 
language, it would be hard to find a single sentence which was not 
quite clear and obvious to the most ordinary readers.'" Yet when 
all this is said these letters abound in sane discussion of living is- 
sues and in sound moral utterances on all sorts of subjects. No 
one can know Ruskin until he has read Fors. He himself points 
out that: — 

1 John Ruskin, by Fred. Harrison, pp. 181, 184. 

i , 



RELIGIOUS LESSONS IN POLITICAL ECONOMY 375 

"Readers should be clearly aware of one peculiarity in the man- 
ner of my writing in Fors, which might otherwise much mis- 
lead them; — namely, that if they will enclose in brackets with 
their pen, passages of evident irony, all the rest of the book is 
written with absolute seriousness and literalness of meaning. The 
volence, or grotesque aspect, of a statement may seem as if I were 
mocking; but this comes mainly of my endeavour to bring the 
absolute truth out into pure crystalline structure, unmodified by 
disguise of custom, or obscurity of language; for the result of that 
process is continually to reduce the facts into a form so contrary, 
if theoretical, to our ordinary impressions, and so contrary, if moral, 
to our ordinary practice, that the straightforward statement of 
them looks like a jest. But every such apparent jest will be found, 
if you think of it, a pure, very dreadful, and utterly imperious, 
veracity." — Letter 67. 

And he adds a series of aphorisms which, he says, "contain the 
gist of the book." These aphorisms are sixteen in number and fill 
nearly six pages of letter 67, Volume 3. 

In Fors also, religious themes and Scripture references abound. 
Our selections are taken from the solid and serious of the letters, 
but everywhere Scripture allusions and texts are found; and some- 
times whole pages, — page after page — are filled with running com- 
ment upon some Scripture study. For example in Volume 3, let- 
ter 61 contains a genealogical tree of Shem, Ham and Japheth. 
The same letter announces the first volume of a series of classical 
books for the St. George's Library and promises that "the Library 
shall contain the lives and writings of the men who have taught 
the purest theological truth, . . . Moses, Hesiod, Virgil, Dante, 
Chaucer and John the Divine." 

Letter 63 contains a commentary on the text, "unfruitful works 
of darkness," and another on "the peace of God which passeth all 
understanding," with interesting notes on the holy land and refer- 
ences to Gen. 10:15-18; Judges 3:3-7; Num. 13:22-29; Deu. 3: 
8-13; Josh. 10:6-14; Gen. 48:22, etc. 

These, and many other passages, which illustrate the purpose of 
our volume are so frequent, and are so run in with other subjects 
that we can only call attention to them in this brief way. 

The 96th, and last of the letters, contains a charming story of 
"Rosy Vale," and concludes the entire series with the following 
exquisit-e passages: — 

This lovely history, of a life spent in the garden of God, sums. 



376 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

as it illumines, all that I have tried to teach in the series of letters 
which I now feel that it is time to close. 

The "Go and do thou likewise," which every kindly intelligent 
spirit cannot but hear spoken to it, in each sentence of the quiet 
narrative, is of more searching and all-embracing urgency than 
any appeal I have dared to make in my own writings. Looking 
back upon my efforts for the last twenty years, I believe that their 
failure has been in very great part owing to my compromise with 
the infidelity of this outer world, and my endeavour to base my 
pleading upon motives of ordinary prudence and kindness, in- 
stead of on the primary duty of loving God, — foundation other than 
which can no man lay. I thought myself speaking to a crowd 
which could only be influenced by visible utility; nor was I the 
least aware how many entirely good and holy persons were living 
in the faith and love of God as vividly and practically now £is 
ever in the early enthusiasm of Christendom, until, chiefly in con- 
sequence of the great illnesses which, for some time after 1878, for- 
bade my accustomed literary labour, I was brought into closer per- 
sonal relations with the friends in America, Scotland, Ireland, and 
Italy, to whom, if I am spared to write any record of my life, 
it will be seen that I owe the best hopes and highest thoughts which: 
have supported and guided the force of my matured mind. These 
have shown me, with lovely initiation, in how many secret places 
the prayer was made which I had foolishly listened for at the cor- 
ners of the streets ; and on how many hills which I had thought left 
desolate, the hosts of heaven still moved in chariots of fire. 

But surely the time is come when all these faithful armies should 
lift up the standard of their Lord, — not by might, nor by power, 
but by His spirit, bringing forth judgment unto victory. That they 
should no more be hidden, nor overcome of evil, but overcome evil 
with good. If the enemy cometh in like a flood, how much more 
may the rivers of Paradise? Are there not fountains of the great 
deep that open to bless, not destroy? 

And the beginning of blessing, if you will think of it, is in that 
promise, "Great shall be the peace of thy children." All the 
world is but as one orphanage, so long as its children know not God 
their Father ; and all wisdom and knowledge is only more bewildered 
darkness, so long as you have not taught them the fear of the 
Lord. 

Not to be taken out of the world in monastic sorrow, but to be 
[kept from its evil in shepherded peace; — ought not this to be done 
[for all the children held at the fonts beside which we vow, in their 
name, to renounce the world? Renounce! nay, ought we not, at 
last, to redeem? 

The story of Rosy Vale is not ended; — surely out of its silence 
the mountains and the hills shall break forth into singing, and 
round it the desert rejoice, and blossom as the rose! — Letter 96. 



RELIGIOUS LESSONS IN POLITICAL ECONOMY 377 

RIGHTEOUSNESS AND JUSTICE. 

My friends, you have trusted, in your time, too many idle words. 
Read now these following, not idle ones; and remember them; 
and trust them, for they are true: — 

"Oh, thou afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not comforted, be- 
hold, I will lay thy stones with fair colours, and lay thy foundations 
with sapphires. 

"And all thy children shall be taught of the Lord; and great 
shall be the peace of thy children. 

"In righteousness shalt thou be established: thou shalt be far from 
oppression; for thou shalt not fear: and from terror; for it shall 
not come near thee. . . . 

"Whosoever shall gather together against thee shall fall for thy 
sake. . . . 

"No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper; and every 
tongue that shall rise against thee in judgment thou shalt con- 
demn. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord; and their 
righteousness is of me, saith the Lord." 

Remember only that in this now antiquated translation, "right- 
eousness" means, accurately, and simply, "justice," and is the eter- 
nal law of right, obeyed alike in the great times of each state, by 
Jew, Greek, and Roman. — Letter 8. 

JUSTICE IN EDUCATION. 

In education especially, true justice is curiously unequal — if you 
choose to give it a hard name, iniquitous. The right law of it is 
that you are to take most pains with the best material. Many con- 
scientious masters will plead for the exactly contrary iniquity, and 
say you should take the most pains with the dullest boys. But that 
is not so (only you must be very careful that you know which are 
the dull boys; for the cleverest look often very like them). Never 
waste pains on bad ground; let it remain rough, though properly 
looked after and cared for ; it will be of best service so ; but spare no 
labour on the good, or on what has in it the capacity of good. — Let- 
ter 9. 

A CHRISTMAS LETTER ABOUT CHRISTMAS. 

For one or two things this story of the Nativity is certainly, and 
without any manner oif doubt. It relates either a fact full of power, 
or a dream full of meaning. It is, at the least, not a cunningly de- 
vised fable, but the record of an impression made, by some strange 
spiritual cause, on the minds of the human race, at the most critical 
period of their existence; — an impression which has produced, in 
past ages, the greatest effect on mankind ever yet achieved by an in- 
tellectual conception; and which is yet to guide, by the determina- 
tion of its truth or falsehood, the absolute destiny of ages to come. 



378 THE RELIGION OF RUSK IN 

Will you give some little time, therefore, to think of it with me 
to-day, being, as you tell me, sure of its truth? What, then let me 
ask you, is its truth 'to youf The Child for whose birth you are 
rejoicing was born, you are told, to save His people from their sins; 
but I have never noticed that you were particularly conscious of any 
sins to be saved from. If I were to tax you with any one in particu- 
lar — lying, or thieving, or the like — my belief is you would say 
directly I had no business to do anything of the kind. 

Nay, but, you may perhaps answer me — "That is because we 
have been saved from our sins; and we are making merry, because 
we are so perfectly good." 

What is, or may be, this Nativity, to you, then, I repeat? Shall 
we consider, a little, what, at all events, it was to the people 
of its time ; and so make ourselves more clear as to what it might be 
to us? We will read slowly. 

"And there were, in that country, shepherds, staying out in the 
field, keeping watch over their flocks by night." 

Watching night and day, that means ; not going home. The stay- 
ing out in the field is the translation of a word from which a Greek 
nymph has her name, Agraulos, "the stayer out in fields," of whom 
I shall have something to -tell you, soon. 

"And behold, the Messenger of the Lord stood above them, and the 
glory of the Lord lighted round them, and they feared a great fear." 

"Messenger." You must remember that, when this was written, 
the word "angel" had only the effect of our word — "messenger" — 
on men's minds. Our translators say "angel" when they like, and 
"messenger" when they like; but the Bible, messenger only, or angel 
only, as you please. For instance, "Was not Rahab the harlot jus- 
tified by works, when she had received the angels, and sent them 
forth another way?" 

You see, I have written above, not "good will towards men," but 
"love among men." It is nearer right so; but the word is not easy to 
translate at all. What it means precisely, you may conjecture best 
from its use at Christ's baptism — "This is my beloved Son, in whom 
I am well-pleased." For, in precisely the same words, the angels 
say, there is to be "well-pleasing in men." 

Now, my religious friends, I continually hear you talk of acting 
for God's glory, and giving God praise. Might you not, for the 
present, think less of praising, and more of pleasing Him? He can, 
perhaps, dispense with your praise; your opinions of His character, 
even when they come to be held by a large body of the religious 
press, are not of material importance to Him. He has the hosts of 
heaven to praise Him, who see more of His ways, it is likely, than 
you ; but you hear that you may be pleasing to Him if you try : — 
that He expected, then, to have some satisfaction in you ; and might 



RELIGIOUS LESSONS IN POLITICAL ECONOMY 379 

have even great satisfaction — well-pleasing, as in His own Son, if 
you tried. 

The shepherds were told that their Saviour was that day born 
to them *'in David's village." We are apt to think that this was 
told, as of special interest to them, because David was a King. 

Not so. It was told them because David was in youth not a 
King; but a Shepherd like themselves. "To you, shepherds, is 
born this day a Saviour in the shepherd's town;" that would be 
the deep sound of the message in their ears. For the great inter- 
est to them in the story of David himself must have been always, 
not that he had saved the monarchy, or subdued Syria, or writ- 
ten Psalms, but that he had kept sheep in those very fields they 
were watching in ; and that his grandmother Ruth had gone glean- 
ing, hard by. 

And they said hastily, "Let us go and see." 

Will you note carefully that they only think of seeing, not of 
worshipping. Even when they do see the Child, it is not said that 
they worshipped. They were simple people, and had not much 
faculty of worship ; even though the heavens had opened for them, 
and the hosts of heaven had sung. They had been at first only 
frightened; then curious, and communicative to the by-standers: 
they do not think even of making any offering, which would have 
been a natural thought enough, as it was to the first of shepherds: 
but they brought no firstlings of their flock — Cit is only in pictures, 
and those chiefly painted for the sake of the picturesque, that the 
shepherds are seen bringing lambs, and baskets of eggs). It is not 
said here that they brought anything, but they looked, and talked, 
and went away praising God, as simple people, — yet taking noth- 
ing to heart; only the mother did that. — Letter 12. 



JOB S QUESTION OF THE RAIN. 

Do you remember the questioning to Job? . . . Eead the 
question concerning this April time? — "Hath the rain a father — 
and who hath begotten the drops of dew, — the hoary Frost of 
Heaven — who hath gendered it?" 

That rain and frost of heaven; and the earth which they loose 
and bind: these, and the labour of your hands to divide them, and 
subdue, are your wealth, for ever — unincreasable. The fruit of 
Earth, and its waters, and its light — such as the strength of the pure 
rock can grow — such as the unthwarted sun in his season brings — 
these are your inheritance. You can diminish it, but cannot in- 
crease: that your barns should be filled with plenty — your presses 
burst with new wine, is your blessing; and every year — when it is 
full — it must be new ; and every year, no more. — Letter 16. 



38o TEE RELIGION OF RUSKIN I 

CURSING AND SWEARING. 

Observe also that swearing is only by extremely ignorant persons 
supposed to be an infringement of the Third Commandment. It 
is disobedience to the teaching of Christ; but the Third Command- 
ment has nothing to do with the matter. People do not take the 
name of God in vain when they swear ; they use it, on the contrary, 
very earnestly and energetically to attest what they wish to say. 
But when the Concert begins with the hymn, "The will of God 
be done," while the audience know perfectly well that there is not 
one in a thousand of them who is trying to do it, or who would have 
it done, if he could help it, unless it was his own will too — that 
is taking the name of God in vain, with a vengeance. 

Cursing, on the other hand, is invoking the aid of a Spirit to 
a harm you wish to see accomplished, but which is too great for 
your own immediate power: and to-day I wish to point out to you 
what intensity of faith in the existence and activity of a spirit- 
ual world is evinced by the curse which is characteristic of the 
English tongue. — Letter W. 

PSALMS XIV AND XV IN QUAINT VERSE. 

I think, accordingly, that some of my readers may be glad to 
have a sounder version of that Psalm 15th, and as the 14th is much 
connected with it, and will be variously useful to us afterwards, 
here they both are, done into verse by an English squire, — or his 
sister, for they alike could rhyme; and the last finished singing 
what her brother left unsung, the Third Fors having early put seal 
on his lips. 

PSALM XIV. — {Dixit Insipiens.) 
The foolish man by flesh and fancy ledd 
His guilty hart with this fond thought hath fed: 
There is noe God that raigneth. 

And so thereafter he and all his mates 
Do workes, which earth corrupt, and Heaven hates: 
Not one that good remaineth. 

Even God him self sent down his piercing ey, 
If of this clayy race he could espy 

One, that his wisdome learneth. 

And loe, he finds that all a strayeng went: 
All plung'd in stincking filth, not one well bent, 
Not one that God discerneth. 

O maddnes of these folkes, thus loosly ledd ! 
These oaniballs, who, as if tihey were bread, 
Gods people do devower: 

Nor ever call on God; but they shall quake 
More than they now do bragg, when he shall take 
The just into his power. 



RELIGIOUS LESSONS IN POLITICAL ECONOMY. 381 

Indeede the poore, opprest by you, you mock: 
Their councells are your common jesting stock : 
But Grod is their recomfort. 

Ah, when from Syon shall the Saver come 
That Jacob, freed by thee, may glad become 
And Israel full of comfort? 

PSALM XV. — (Domine, quis hahitabit.) 

In tabernacle thine, O Lord, who shall remaine? 

Lord, of thy holy hill, who shall the rest obtain? 

Ev'n he that leades a life of unoorrupted traine, 

Whose deeds of righteous hart, whose harty wordes be plain: 

Who with deceitfull tongue hath never us'd to faine; 

Nor neighboure hurtes by deede, nor doth with slander stain: 

Whose eyes a person vile doth hold in vile disdaine. 

But doth, with honour greate, the godly entertaine : 

Who othe and promise given doth faithfully maintain, 

Although some worldly losse thereby he may sustain ; 

From bityng usury who ever doth refraine : 

Who sells not guiltlesse cause for filthy love of gain, 

Who thus proceedes for ay, in sacred mount shall ralgn. 

You may not like this old English at first; but, if you can 
find anybody to read it to you who has an ear, its cadence is massy 
and grand, more than that of most verse I know, and never a word 
is lost. Whether you like it or not, the sense of it is true, — 
Letter 23. 

THE RICHES OF USURY AND CHRISTMAS. 

I got a note from an arithmetical friend the other day, speaking 
of the death of *'an old lady, a cousin of mine, who left — left, 
because she could not take it with her — 200,000^. On calculation, I 
found this old lady who had been lying bedridden for a year, was 
accumulating money (i. e., the results of other people's labour,) at 
the rate of 4d. a minute ; in other words, she awoke in the morning 
ten pounds richer than she went to bed." At which, doubtless, and 
the like miracles throughout the world, "the stars with deep amaze, 
stand fixed with steadfast gaze:" for this is, indeed, a Nativity of an 
adverse god to the one you profess to honour, with them, and the 
angels, at Christmas, by over-eating yourselves. 

I suppose that is the quite essential part of the religion of Christ- 
mas ; and, indeed, it is about the most religious thing you do in the 
year; and if pious people would understand, generally, that, if there 
be indeed any other God than Mammon, He likes to see people com- 
fortable, and nicely dressed, as much as Mammon likes to see them 
fasting and in rags, they might set a wiser example to everybody 
than they do. 

The only serious disadvantage of eating, and fine dressing, con- 
sidered as religious ceremonies, whether at Christmas, or on Sunday, 
in the Sunday dinner and Sunday gown, — is that you don't always 



382 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

clearly understand what the eating and dressing signify. For 
example: why should Sunday be kept otherwise than Christmas, 
and be less merry? Because it is a day of rest, commemorating 
the fulfillment of God's easy work, while Christmas is a day of toil, 
commemorating the beginning of his difficult work? Is that the 
reason? Or because Christmas commemorates His stooping to 
thirty years of sorrow, and Sunday His rising to countless years of 
joy? Which should be the gladdest day of the two, think you, 
on either ground? — Letter 24- 



MANSIONS IN MY FATHER S HOUSE. 

"If it were not so, I would have told you." 

I read those strange words of St. John's gospel this morning, 
for at least the thousandth time; and for the first time, that I 
remember, with any attention. It is difficult, if not impossible, to 
attend rightly without some definite motive, or chance-help, to 
words which one has read and re-read till every one of them slips 
into its place unnoticed, as a familiar guest, — unchallenged as a 
household friend. 

Alas, had He but told us more clearly that it vjos so ! 

I have the profoundest sympathy with St. Thomas, and would 
fain put all his questions over again, and twice as many more. 
"We know not whither Thou goest." That Father's house, — 
where is it? These "remaining-places," how are they to be pre- 
pared for us ? — how are we to be prepared for them ? 

If ever your clergy mean really to help you to read your Bible, — 
the whole of it, and not merely the bits which tell you that you are 
miserable sinners, and that you needn't mind, — they must make a 
translation retaining as many as possible of the words in their 
Greek form, which you may easily learn, and yet which will be 
quit of the danger of becoming debased by any vulgar English use. 
So also, the same word must always be given when it is the same; 
and not in one place, translated "mansion," and in another 
"abode."— Le^ier 27 

"every man to his own." 

I was again stopped by a verse in St. John's gospel this morning, 
not because I had not thought of it before, often enough; but be- 
cause it bears much on our immediate business in one of its ex- 
pressions, — "Ye shall be scattered, every man to his own." 

His own what? 

His own property, his own rights, his own opinions, his own 
place, I suppose one must answer? Every man in his own place; 
and every man acting on his own opinions; and every man having 
his own way. Those are somewhat your own notions of the right- 
est possible state of things, are they not? 



RELIGIOUS LESSONS IN POLITICAL ECONOMY 383 

And you do not think it of any consequence to ask what sort of 
a place your own is? 

As for instance, taking the reference farther on, to the one of 
Christ's followers who that night most distinctly of all that were 
scattered, /ottnd his place, and stayed in it, — "This ministry and 
Apostleship, from which Judas by transgression fell, that he might 
go to his own place." What sort of a place? 

It should interest you, surely, to ask of such things, since you all, 
•whether you like them or not, have your own places; and whether 
you know them or not, your own opinions. It is too true that very 
often you fancy you think one thing, when in reality, you think 
quite another. Most Christian persons, for instance, fancy they 
would like to be in heaven. But that is not their real opinion of the 
place at all. See how grave they will look, if their doctor hints to 
them that there is the least probability of their soon going there. 

I said, that we would especially reverence eight saints, and among 
them St. Paul. I was startled to hear, only a few days afterwards, 
that the German critics have at last positively ascertained that St. 
Paul was Simon Magus; — but I don't mind whether he was not; — 
if he was, we have got seven saints and one of the Magi, to reverence, 
instead of eight saints; — plainly and practically, whoever wrote the 
13th of 1st Corinthians is to be much respected and attended to ; not 
a>s the teacher of salvation by faith, still less of salvation by talking, 
nor even of salvation by almsgiving or martyrdom, but as the bold 
despiser of faith, talk-gift, and burning, if one has not love. Where- 
as this age of ours is so far contrary to any such Pauline doctrine 
that, without especial talent either for faith or martyrdom, and lo- 
quacious usually rather with the tongues of men than of angels, it 
nevertheless thinks to get on, n®t merely without love of its neigh- 
bour, but founding all its proceedings on the precise contrary of that, 
— love of its self, and the seeking of every man for his own. — 
Letter 28. 

GOLD PREFERRED TO GOD. 

The authority of gold instead of the authority of God ; and pref- 
erence of gain, or the increase of gold, to godliness, or the peace of 
God. 

I take, as I promised, the fourteenth and fifteenth Psalms for 
examination with respect to this point. 

The second verse of the fourteenth declares that of the children 
of men, there are none that seek God. 

The fifth verse of the same Psalm declares that God is in the gen- 
eration of the righteous. In them, observe; not needing to be 
sought by them. 

From which statements, evangelical persons conclude that there 
are no righteous persons at all. 



384 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

Again, the fourth verse of the Psalm declares that all the workers 
of iniquity eat up God's people as they eat bread. 

Again, the first verse of the Psalm declares that the fool hath said 
in his heart there is no God ; but the sixth verse declares of the poor 
that he not only knows there is a God, but finds Him to be a refuge. 

Whereupon evangelical persons conclude that the fool and the 
poor mean the same people; and make all the haste they can to be 
rich. 

Putting them, and their interpretations, out of our way, the Psalm 
becomes entirely explicit. There have been in all ages children of 
God and of man: the one born of the Spirit and obeying it; the 
other born of the flesh, and obeying it. I don't know how that en- 
tirely unintelligible sentence, "There were they in great fear," got 
into our English Psalm ; in both the Greek and Latin versions it is, 
"God hath broken the bones of those that please men." 

And it is here said of the entire body of the children of men, at a 
particular time, that they had at that time all gone astray beyond 
hope; that none were left who so much as sought God, much less 
who were likely to find Him ; and that these wretches and vagabonds 
were eating up God's own people as they ate bread. 

Which has indeed been generally so in all ages: but beyond all 
recorded history is so in ours. Just and godly people can't live ; and 
every clever rogue and industrious fool is making his fortune out of 
them, and producing abominable works of all sorts besides, — ma- 
terial gasometers, furnaces, chemical works, and the like, — with 
spiritual lies and lasciviousnesses unheard of till now in Christen- 
dom. Which plain and disagreeable meaning of this portion of 
Scripture you will find pious people universally reject with abhor- 
rence, — the direct word and open face of their Master being, in the 
present day, always by them, far more than His other enemies, 
"spitefully entreated, and spitted on." 

Next for the 15th Psalm. 

It begins by asking God who shall abide in His tabernacle, or 
movable tavern; and who shall dwell in His holy hill. Note the 
difference of those two abidings. A tavern, or taberna, is originally 
a hut made by a traveller, of sticks cut on the spot; then, if he so 
arrange it as to be portable, it is a tabernacle; so that, generally, a 
portable hut or house, supported by rods or sticks when it is set up, 
is a tabernacle ; — on a large scale, having boards as well as curtains, 
and capable of much stateliness, but nearly synonymous with a tent, 
in Latin. 

Therefore, the first question is. Who among travelling men will 
have God set up his tavern for him when he wants rest? 

And the second question is. Who of travelling men, shall finally 



RELIGIOUS LESSONS IN POLITICAL ECONOMY 385 

dwell, desiring to wander no more, in God's own house, established 
above the hills, where all nations flow to it? 

You, perhaps, don't believe that either of these abodes may, or do, 
exist in reality : nor that God would ever cut down branches for you ; 
or, better still bid them spring up for a bower; or that He would 
like to see you in His own house, if you would go there. You pre- 
fer the buildings lately put up in rows for you "one brick thick 
in the walls," in convenient neighborhood to your pleasant business? 
Be it so; — then the fifteenth Psalm has nothing to say to you. For 
those who care to lodge with God, these following are the conditions 
of character: 

They are to -walk or deal uprightly with men. They are to work 
or do justice; or, in sum, do the best they can with their hands. 
They are to speak the truth to their own hearts, and see they do 
not persuade themselves they are honest when they ought to know 
themselves to be knaves ; nor persuade themselves they are charitable 
and kind, when they ought to know themselves to be thieves and 
murderers. They are not to bite people with their tongues behind 
their backs, if they dare not rebuke them face to face. They are 
not to take up, or catch at, subjects of blame; but they are utterly 
and absolutely to despise vile persons who fear no God, and think 
the world was begot by mud, and is fed by money ; and they are not 
to defend a guilty man's cause against an innocent one. Above all, 
this last verse is written for lawyers, or professed interpreters of jus- 
tice, who are of all men most villainous, if, knowingly, they take 
reward against an innocent or rightfully contending person. And 
on these conditions the promise of God's presence and strength is 
finally given. He that doeth thus shall not be moved, or shaken: 
for him, tabernacle and rock are alike safe: no wind shall over- 
throw them, nor earthquake rend. 

That is the meaning of the fourteenth and fifteenth Psalms ; and 
if you so believe them, and obey them, you will find your account 
in it. And they are the Word of God to you, so far as you have 
hearts capable of understanding them, or any other such message 
brought by His servants. But if your heart is dishonest and re- 
bellious, you may read them for ever with lip-service, and all the 
■while be "men-pleasers," whose bones are to be broken at the pit's 
mouth, and so left incapable of breath, brought by any winds of 
Heaven. — Letter 36. 

THE BOOK OF GENESIS. 

I am a simpleton, am I, to quote such an exploded book as Gen- 
esis? My good wiseacre readers, I know as many flaws in the book 
of Genesis as the best of you, but I knew the book before I knew its 
flaws, while you know the flaws, and never have known the book, 
nor can know it. And it is at present much the worse for you ; for 
indeed the stories of this book of Genesis have been the nursery 



386 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

tales of men mightiest whom the world has yet seen in art, and 
policy, and virtue, and none of you will write better stories for your 
children, yet awhile. And your little Cains will learn quickly 
enough to ask if they are their brother's keepers, and your little 
Fathers of Canaan merrily enough to show their own father's naked- 
ness without dread either of banishment or malediction ; but many 
a day will pass, and their evil generations vanish with it, in that 
sudden nothingness of the wicked, ''He passed away, and lo, he 
was not," before one will again rise, of whose death there may re- 
main the Divine tradition, "He walked with God, and was not, for 
God took him." Apotheosis ! How the dim hope of it haunts even 
the last degradation of men; and through the six thousand years 
from Enoch, and the vague Greek ages which dreamed of their 
twin-hero stars, declines, in this final stage of civilization, into de- 
pendence on the sweet promise of the Anglo-Russian tempter, with 
his ermine tail, "Ye shall be as Gods, and buy cat-skin cheap." — 
Letter 4.1. 

THE GENESIS ORDER OF WORK. 

Neither almsgiving nor praying, therefore, nor psalm-singing, nor 
even — as poor Livingstone thought, to his own death, and our bitter 
loss, — discovering the mountains of the Moon, have anything to do 
with "good work," or God's work. But it is not so very difficult to 
discover what that work is. You keep the Sabbath, in imitation 
of God's rest. Do, by all manner of means, if you like; and keep 
also the rest of the week in imitation of God's work. 

Day First. — The Making, or letting in, of Light. 

Day Second. — The Discipline and Firmament of "Waters. 

Day Third. — The Separation of earth from water, and planting 

the secure earth with trees. 
Day Fourth. — The Establishment of times and seasons, and of the 

authority of the stars. 
Day Fifth. — Filling the water and air with fish and birds. 
Day Sixth. — Filling the land with beasts; and putting divine 

life into the clay of one of these, that it may 

have authority over the others, and over the rest 

of the Creation. 

_ So the good human work may properly divide itself into the same 
six branches ; and will be a perfectly literal and practical following 
out of the Divine ; and will have opposed to it a correspondent Dia- 
bolic force of eternally bad work — as much worse than idleness or 
death, as good work is better than idleness or death. 

Good work, then, will be, — 

A. Letting in light where there was darkness; as especially into 



RELIGIOUS LESSONS IN POLITICAL ECONOMY 387 

poor rooms and back streets ; and generally guiding and administer- 
ing the sunshine wherever we can, by all the means in our power. 

And the correspondent Diabolic work is putting a tax on win? 
dows, and blocking out the sun's light with smoke. 

B. Disciplining the falling waters. In the Divine work, this is 
the ordinance of clouds;^ in the human, it is properly putting the 
clouds to service; and first stopping the rain where they carry it 
from the sea, and then keeping it pure as it goes back to the sea 
again. 

And the correspondent Diabolic work is the arrangement of land 
so as to throw all the water back to the sea as fast as we can; and 
putting every sort of filth into the stream as it runs. 

c. The separation of earth from water, and planting it with trees. 
The correspondent human work is especially clearing morasses, and 
planting desert ground. 

The correspondent Diabolic work is turning good land and water 
into mud ; and cutting down trees that we may drive steam ploughs, 
etc., etc. 

D. The establishment of times and seasons. The correspondent 
human work is a due watching of the rise and set of stars, and course 
of the sun ; and due administration and forethought of our own an- 
nual labours, preparing for them in hope, and concluding them in 
joyfulness, according to the laws and gifts of Heaven. Which beau- 
tiful order is set forth in symbols on all lordly human buildings 
round the semi-circular arches which are types of the rise and fall of 
days and years. 

And the correspondent Diabolic work is turning night into day 
with candles, so that we never see the stars ; and mixing the seasons 
up one with another, and having early strawberries, and green 
pease and the like. 

E. Filling the waters with fish, and air with birds. The corre- 
spondent human work is Mr. Frank Buckland's, and the like. 

The correspondent Diabolic work is poisoning fish as is done at 
Coniston with copper-mining and catching them for fashionable din- 
ners, when they ought not to be caught ; and treating birds- — as birds 
are treated. 

i F. Filling the earth with beasts, properly known and cared for 
by their master, Man; but chiefly, breathing into the clayey and 
brutal nature of Man himself, the rSoul, or Love, of God. 
I The correspondent Diabolic work is shooting and tormenting 
beasts; and grinding out the soul of man from his flesh, with ma- 
[chine labour ; and then grinding down the flesh of him, when noth- 

1 See "Modem Painters," Vol. III., "The Firmament," 



388 THE RELIGION OF EUSKIN 

ing else is left, into clay, with machines for that purpose, — mitrafl- 
leuses, Woolwich infants, and the like. 

These are the six main heads of Grod's and the Devil's work.—* 
Letter ^.6. 

A CHRISTMAS HOMILY. 

"Stand therefore; having your loins girt about with Truth." 
That means, that the strength of your backbone depends on your 
meaning to do true battle. 

"And having on the breastplate of Justice." 

That means, there are to be no partialities in your heart, of anger 
OT pity; — but you must only in justice kill, and only in justice keep 
alive. 

"And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of Peace." 
That means that where your foot pauses, moves, or enters, there 

shall be peace; and where you can only shake the dust of it on 

the threshold, mourning. 

"Above all, take the shield of Faith." 

Of fidelity or obedience to your captain, showing his bearings, 
argent, a cross gules ; your safety, and all the army's, being first in 
the obedience of faith : and all casting of spears vain against such 
guarded phalanx. 

"And take the helmet of Salvation." 

Elsewhere, the Uoye of salvation, that being the defense of youp 
intellect against base and sad thoughts, as the shield of fidelity is 
the defense of your heart against burning and consuming passions, 

"And the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of Ood." 
That being your weapon of war, — your power of action, whether 
with sword or ploughshare; according to the saying of St. John of 
the young soldiers of Christ, "I have written unto you, young men, 
because ye are strong, and the Word of God abideth in you." The 
Word by which the heavens were of old ; and which, being once only 
Breath, became in man Flesh, "quickening it by the spirit" into the 
life which is, and is to come ; and enabling it for all the works nobly 
done by the quick, and following the dead. — Letter 4-8. 

EARLY TEACHING OF THH SCRIPTURES. 

It makes me feel, more than anything I ever yet met with in 
human words, how much I owe to my mother for having so exercised 
me in the Scriptures as to make me grasp them in what my corre- 
spondent would call their "concrete whole;" and above all, taught 
me to reverence them, as transcending all thought, and ordaining 
all conduct. 



RELIGIOUS LESSONS IN POLITICAL ECONOMY 3&0 

This she effected, not by her own sayings or personal authority, 
imt simply by compelling me to read the book thoroughly, for my- 
self. As soon as I was able to read with fluency, she begain a course 
of Bible work with me, which never ceased till I went to Oxford. 
■She read alternate verses with me, watching, at first, every intona- 
tion of my voice, and correcting the false ones, till she made ma 
understand the verse, if within my reach, rightly, and energetically. 
It might be beyond me altogether; that she did not care about; but 
she made sure ttiat as soon as I got hold of it at all, I should get hold 
of it by the right end. 

In this way she began with the first verse of Genesis, and went 
straight through to the last verse of the Apocalypse; hard names, 
aaumbers, Levitical law, and all ; and began again at Genesis the next 
day; if a name was hard, the better the exercise in pronunciation, 
— if a chapter was tiresome, the better lesson in patience, — if loath- 
eome, the better lesson in faith that there was some use in its being 
so outspoken. After our chapters I had to learn a few verses by 
'heart, or repeat, to make sure I had not lost, something of what was 
already known ; and, I had to learn the whole body of the fine old 
Scottish paraphrases, which are good, melodious, and forceful verse ; 
and to which, together with the Bible itself, I owe the first cultiva- 
tion of my ear in sound. It is strange that of all the pieces of the 
Bible which my mother thus taught me, that which cost me most 
lo learn, and which was, to my child's mind, chiefly repulsive — 
the 119th Psalm — has now become of all the most precious to me, 
in its overflowing and glorious passion of love for the Law of God : 
"Oh, how love I Thy law ! it is my meditation all the day ; I have ren 
frained my feet from every evil way, that I might keep Thy word." 
Letter 53. 

THE PSALMS AS USED TS THE EPISCOPAL SERVICE. 

The Parables have their living use, as well as their danger ; but the 
Psalter has become practically dead ; and the form of repeating it in 
the daily service only deadens the phrases of it by familiarity. I 
have occasion today to dwell on another piece of this writing of the 
father of Christ, — which, read in its full meaning, will be as new to 
us as the first-heard song of a foreign land. 

I translate literally ; the Septuagint confirming the Vulgate in the 
differences from our common rendering, several of which are im- 
portant. 

"1. Oh Lord, our own Lord, how admirable is thy Name in all 
the earth! 

2. Because thy ma^ificenoe is set above the heavens. 



390 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

3. Out of the mouth of children and sucklings thou hast per- 

fected praise, because of thine enemies, that thou mightest 
scatter the enemy and avenger. 

4. Since I see thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon 

and the stars which thou hast founded. 

5. iWhat is man that thou rememberest him, or the son of man, 

that thou lookest on him? 

6. Thou hast lessened him a little from the angels; thou hast; 

crowned him with glory and honour, and hast set him over 
all the works of thy hands. 

7. Thou hast put all things under his feet ; sheep, and all oxen 

— and the flocks of the plain. 

8. The birds of the heaven and the fish of the sea, and all 

that walk in the paths of the sea. 

9. Oh Lord, our own Lord, how admirable is thy Name in all 

the earth 1" 

Note in Verses 1 and 9. — Domine, Dominus noster, our own Lord ; 
Kvpic, o Kv/)to5 Tjfiwv; claiming thus the Fatherhood. The "Lord our 
Governour" of the Prayer Book entirely loses the meaning. How 
admirable is Thy Name I Oavixaarov, "wonderful," as in Isaiah, 
"His name shall be called Wonderful, the Counsellor." Again our 
translation "excellent" loses the meaning. 

Verse 2. — Thy magnificence. Literally, "thy greatness in work- 
ing" (Gk. [icyaXoTrpeireLa — splcndour in aspect), distinguished from 
mere "glory" or greatness in fame. 

Verse 3, — Sidney has it: 

"From sucklings hath thy honour sprung, 
Thy force hath flowed from babies' tongne.** 

The meaning of this difficult verse is given by implication in Matt, 
xxi. 16. And again, that verse, like all the other great teachings 
of Christ, is open to a terrific misinterpretation ; — namely, the popu- 
lar evangelical one, that children should be teachers and preachers, 
— ("cheering mother, cheering father, from the Bible true"). The 
lovely meaning of the words of Christ, which this vile error hides, is 
that children, remaining children, and uttering, out of their own 
hearts, such things as their Maker puts there, are pure in sight, and 
perfect in praise. 

Verse 4. — The moon and the stars which thou hast founded — 
"fundasti" — e^c/tcAuocras. It is much more than "ordained"; the 
idea of stable placing in space being the main one in David's mind. 
And it remains to this day the wonder of wonders in all wise men's 



RELIGIOUS LESSONS IN POLITICAL ECONOMY 391 

minds. The earth swings round the sun, — yes, but what holds the 
sun? The sun swings round something else. Be it so, — then, what 
else? 

Sidney : — 

"When I upon the heavens do look, 
Which tall from thee their essence took, 
When moon and stars my thought beholdeth, 
Whose life no life but of thee holdeth." 

Verse 5. — That thou lookest on him ; tmaKtwrq avrov, "art a bishop 
to him." The Greek word is the same in the verse "I was sick and ye 
visited me." 

Verse 6. — Thou hast lessened him; — perhaps better, thou hast 
made him but by a little, less, than the angels; T^AaxTwaas avrov 
^paxv Tt. The inferiority is not of present position merely, but of 
scale in being. 

Verse 7. — Sheep, and all oxen, and the flocks of the plain: KTqvq 
irou TreSiou. Beasts for service in the plain, traversing great spaces 
« — camel and horse. — Letter 53. 



WRONG USE OF THE PARABLES. 

Why prayer should be taught by the story of the unjust judge; 
use of present opportunity by that of the unjust steward; and use of 
the gifts of God by that of the hard man who reaped where he had 
not sown, — there is no human creature wise enough to know; — but 
there are the traps set; and every slack judge, cheating servant, and 
gnawing usurer may, if he will, approve himself in these. 

"Thou knewest that I was a hard man." Yes — and if God were 
also a hard God, and reaped where He had not sown — the conclusion 
would be true that earthly usury was right. But which of God's 
gifts to us are not His own? 

The meaning of the parable, heard with ears unbesotted, is this: 
■ — ^^You, among hard and unjust men, yet suffer their claim to the 
.return of what they never gave ; you suffer them to reap where they 
have not strawed. — But to me, the Just Lord of your life — whose is 
the breath in your nostrils, whose the fire in your blood, who gave 
you light and thought, and the fruit of earth and the dew of heaven, 
— to me, of all this gift, will you return no fruit but only the dust 
of your bodies, and the wreck of your souls?" — Letter 53. 

OBEDIENCE ESSENTIAL TO A KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 

Whatever chemical or anatomical facts may appear to our present 
scientific intelligences, inconsistent with the Life of God, the his- 
torical fact is that no happiness nor power has ever been attained by 
human creatures unless in that thirst for the presence of a Divine 
King ; and that nothing but weakness, misery, and death have ever 



39a TEE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

resulted from the desire to destroy their King, and to have thieves 
and murderers released to them instead. Also this fact is historically 
certain, — that the Life of God is not to be discovered by reasoning, 
but by obeying; that on doing what is plainly ordered, the wisdom 
and presence of the Orderer become manifest ; that only so His way 
can be known on earth, and His saving health among all nations; 
and that on disobedience always follows darkness, the forerunner of 
death. 

And now for corollary on the eighth Psalm, read the first and 
second of Hebrews, and to the twelfth verse of the third, slowly; 
fitting the verse of the psalm — "lunam et stellas quae tu fundasti," 
with "Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundations of 
the earth"; and then noting how the subjection which is merely 
of the lower creatures, in the psalm, becomes the subjection of all 
things, and at last of death itself, in the victory foretold to those 
who are faithful to their Captain, made perfect through suffer- 
ings; their Faith, observe, consisting primarily in closer and more 
constant obeJience than the Mosaic law required, — "For if the 
word spoken by angels was steadfast, £ind every transgression and 
disobedience received its just recompence of reward, how shall we 
escape, if we neglect so great salvation!" The full argument is: 
"Moses, with but a little salvation, saved you from earthly bondage, 
and brought you to an earthly land of life; Christ, with a great 
salvation, saves you from soul bondage, and brings you to an eternal 
land of life; but, if he who despised the little salvation, and its lax 
law, (left lax because of the hardness of your hearts), died with- 
out mercy, how shall we escape, if now, with hearts of flesh, we 
despise so great salvation, refuse the Eternal Land of Promise, and 
break the stricter and relaxless law of Christian desert-pilgrimage?" 
And if these threatenings and promises still remain obscure to us, it 
is only because we have resolutely refused to obey the orders which 
were not obscure, and quenched the Spirit which was already given. 
How far the world around us may be yet beyond our control, only 
because a curse has been brought upon it by our sloth and infidelity, 
none of us can tell ; still less may we dare either to praise or accuse 
our Master, for the state of the creation over which He appointed 
us kings, and in which we have chosen to live as swine. One thing 
we know, or may know, if we will, — that the heart and conscience 
of man are divine ; that in his perception of evil, in his recognition 
of good, he is himself a God manifest in the flesh; that his joy in 
love, his agony in anger, his indignation at injustice, his glory in 
self-sacrifice, are all eternal, indisputable proofs of his unity with a 
great Spiritual Head; that in these, and not merely in his more 
availing form, or manifold instinct, he is king over the lower ani- 
mate world ; that, so far as he denies or forfeits these, he dishonours 
the Name of his Father, and makes it unholy and unadmirable ia 



RELIGIOUS LESSONS IN POLITICAL ECONOMY 393 

the earth ; that so far as he confesses, and rules by, these, he hallows 
and makes admirable the Name of his Father, and receives, in his 
sonship, fulness of power with Him, whose are the kingdom, the 
power, and the glory, world without end. — Letter 53. 

DOING ACCORDING TO CONSCIENCE. 

It has been a prevalent notion in the minds of well-disposed per- 
sons, that if they acted according to their own conscience, they must, 
therefore, be doing right. 

But they assume, in feeling or asserting this, either that there 
is no Law of God, or that it cannot be known ; but only felt, or con- 
jectured. 

"I must do what I think right." How often is this sentence ut- 
tered and acted on — bravely — nobly — innocently; but always — be- 
cause of its egotism — erringly. You must not do what you think 
right, but, whether you or anybody think, or don't think it, what 
is right. 

*'I must act according to the dictates of my conscience." 

By no means, my conscientious friend, unless you are quite sure 
that yours is not the conscience of an ass. 

*'I am doing my best — what can man do more?" 

You might be doing much less, and yet much better: — perhaps 
you are doing your best in producing, or doing, an eternally bad 
thing. 

All these three sayings, and the convictions they express, are 
wise only in the mouths and minds of wise men ; they are deadly, 
and all the deadlier because bearing an image and superscription of 
virtue, in the mouths and minds of fools. 

"But there is every gradation, surely, between wisdom and 
folly?" 

No. The fool, whatever his wit, is the man who doesn't know 
his master — who has said in his heart — there is no God — no Law. 

The wise man knows his master. Less or more wise, he perceives 
lower or higher masters ; but always some creature larger than him- 
self — some law holier than his own. A law to be sought — learned, 
loved — obeyed; but in order to its discovery, the obedience must 
be begun first, to the best one knows. Obey something; and you 
will have a chance some day of finding out what is best to obey. 
But if you begin by obeying nothing, you will end by obeying 
Beelzebub and all his seven invited friends. — Letter 54-' 

Christ's law about money. 

The law of Christ about money and other forms of personal 
wealth, is taught, first in parables, in which He likens himself to 
the masters of this world, and explains the conduct whidi Christians 



394 TEE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

should hold to Him, their heavenly Master, by which they hold on 
earth, to earthly ones. 

He likens himself, in these stories, several times, to unkind or un- 
just masters, and especially to hard and usurious ones. And the 
gist of the parables in each case is, "If ye do so, and are thus faith- 
ful to hard and cruel masters, in earthly things, how much more 
should ye be faithful to a merciful Master, in heavenly things?" 

Which argument, evil-minded men wrest, as they do also the 
other scriptures, to their own destruction. And instead of reading,, 
for instance, in the parable of the Usurer, the intended lesson of in- 
dustry in the employment of God's gifts, they read in it a justifica- 
tion of the crime which, in other parts of the same scripture, is di- 
rectly forbidden. And there is indeed no doubt that, if the other 
prophetic parts of the Bible be true, these stories are so worded that 
they may be touchstones of the heart. They are nets, which sift 
the kindly reader from the selfish. The parable of the Usurer is 
like a mill sieve: — the fine flour falls through it, bolted finer; the 
chaff sticks in it. 

Therefore, the only way to understand these difficult parts of the 
Bible, or even to approach them with safety, is first to read and 
obey the easy ones. Then the difficult ones all become beautiful 
and clear: — otherwise they remain venomous enigmas, with a 
Sphinx of destruction provoking false souls to read them, and ruin- 
ing them in their own replies. 

Now the orders, "not to lay up treasure for ourselves on earth," 
and to "sell that we have, and give alms," and to "provide ourselves 
bags which wax not old," are perfectly direct, unmistakable, — uni- 
versal; and while we are not at all likely to be blamed by God for 
not imitating Him as a Judge, we shall assuredly be condemned 
by Him for not, under Judgment, doing as we were bid. But even 
if we do not feel able to obey these orders, if we must and will lay 
up treasures on earth, and provide ourselves bags with holes in them, 
— God may perhaps still, with scorn, permit us in our weakness, 
provided we are content with our earthly treasures, when we have 
got them, and don't oppress our brethren, and grind down their 
souls with them. We may have our old bag about our neck, if we 
will, and go to heaven like beggars ; — but if we sell our brother also, 
and put the price of his life in the bag, we need not think to enter 
the kingdom of God so loaded. A rich man may, though hardly, 
enter the kingdom of heaven without repenting him of his riches; 
but not the thief, without repenting his theft; nor the adulterer, 
without repenting his adultery; nor the usurer, without repenting 
his usury. — Letter 68. 

THE world's two GROUPS OP MEN. 

The world is divided into two groups of men; the first, those 



RELIGIOUS LESSONS IN POLITICAL ECONOMY 395 

whose God ia their God, and whose glory is their glory, who mind 
heavenly things ; and the second, men whose God is their belly, and 
whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things. That is 
just as demonstrable a scientific fact as the separation of land from 
water. . . . All strong character curdles itself out of the scum 
into its own place and power, or impotence: and they that sow to 
the Flesh do of the Flesh reap corruption ; and they that sow to the 
Spirit, do of the Spirit reap Life. 

I pause, without writing "everlasting," as perhaps you expected. 
The first sign of noble trust in God and man, is to be able to act with- 
out any such hope. All the heroic deeds, all the purely unselfish 
passions of our existence, depend on our being able to live, if need 
be, through the shadow of death: and the daily heroism of simply 
brave men consists in fronting and accepting Death as such, trust- 
ing that what their Maker decrees for them shall be well. 

But what Carpaccio knows, and what I know also, are precisely 
the things which your wiseacre apothecaries, and their apprentices, 
and too often your wiseacre rectors and vicars, and their apprentices, 
tell you that you can't know, because "eye hath not seen nor ear 
heard them," the things which God hath prepared for them that 
love Him. But God has revealed them to it5, — . . , — to every 
child that has been taught to know its Father in Heaven, — by the 
Spirit: because we have minded, or do mind, the things of the Spirit 
in some measure, and in such measure have entered into our rest. 

"The things which God hath prepared for them that love Him." 
Hereafter, and up there, above the clouds, you have been taught to 
think ; — until you were informed by your land-surveyors that there 
was neither up nor down ; but only an axis of x and an axis of y; and 
by aspiring aeronauts that there was nothing in the blue but damp 
and azote. And now you don't believe these things are prepared 
an^/where? They are prepared just as much as ever, when and 
where they used to be: just now, and here, close at your hand. All 
things are prepared, — come ye to the marriage. Up and down on 
the old highways which your fathers trod, and under the hedges of 
virgin's bower and wild rose which your fathers planted, there are 
the messengers crying to you to come. Nay, at your very doors, 
though one is just like the other in your model lodging houses, — 
there is One knocking, if you would open, with something better than 
tracts in His basket ; — supper, and very material supper, if you will 
only condescend to eat of angel's food first. There are meats for the 
belly, and the belly for meats; doth not your Father know that ye 
have need of these things? But if you make your belly your only 
love, and your meats your only masters, God shall destroy both it 
and them. — Letter 72. 



VII 

ARROWS OF THE CHACE. 
Vol. n. (1880.) 

Volume I of "The Arrows of the Chace" is already quoted in 
Book II of this work. This second volume treats of subjects which 
properly belong here. The chronological order of the 103 letters in 
this volume is given by their author in an index, together with 
those in the first volume. They treat of all sorts of questions, under 
the comprehensive heading of "Politics, Economy, and Miscellan- 
eous Matters." There are twenty-six passages of Scripture quoted 
and commented upon in the two volumes. Two or three selections 
follow : — 

LOVE, NOT LUST. 

The great relation of the sexes is Love, not Lust; that is the re- 
lation in which "male and female created He them;" putting into 
them, indeed, to be distinctly restrained to the office of fruitfulness, 
the brutal passion of Lust: but giving them the spiritual power of 
Love, that each spirit might be greater and purer by its bond to an- 
other associate spirit, in this world, and that which is to come; 
help-mates, and sharers of each other's joy for ever. — Miscellaneous 
Letters. 

EMPLOYMENT — BETTER THAN PUNISHMENT. 

The true instruments of reformation are employment and reward 
— not punishment. Aid the willing, honor the virtuous, and compel 
the idle into occupation, and there will be no need for the com- 
pelling of any into the great and lasting indolence of death. The be- 
ginning of all true reformation among the criminal classes depends 
on the establishment of institutions for their active employment, 
while their criminality is still unripe, and their self-respect, capa- 
cities of affection, and sense of justice not altogether quenched. 
That those who are desirous of employment should always be able 
to find it, will hardly be disputed ; but that those who are undesirous 
of employment should of all persons be the most strictly compelled 
to it, the public are hardly yet convinced. . . . Our neglect of 
the lower orders has reached a point, at which it begins to bear its 
necessary fruit, and every day makes the harvest darker and more 
sure. — Ibid. 

396 



RELIGIOUS LESSONS IN POLITICAL ECONOMY 397 

RIGHT DRESS FOR MAN AND WOMAN. 

The man and woman are meant by God to be perfectly noble and 
beautiful in each other's eyes. The dress is right which makes 
them so. The best dress is that which is beautiful in the eyes of 
noble and wise persons. Right dress is therefore that which is fit 
for the station in life, and the work to be done in it; and which 
is otherwise graceful — becoming — lasting — healthful — and easy; on 
occasion, splendid; always as beautiful as possible. Right dress is 
therefore strong — simple — radiantly clean — carefully put on — care- 
fully kept. Cheap dress, bought for cheapness sake, and costly dress 
bought for costliness sake, are both abominations. Right dress is 
bought for its worth, and at its worth ; and bought only when wanted. 

The Scriptural auithority for dress is centralized by Proverbs xxxi, 
21, 22; and by Samuel i, 24; the latter especially indicating the 
duty of the king or governor of the state; as the former the duty 
of the housewife. It is necessary for the complete understanding of 
those passages, that the reader should know that "scarlet" means 
intense central radiance of pure color ; it is the type of purest color — 
between pale and dark — between sad and gay. It was therefore 
used with hyssop as a type of purification. There are many stronger 
passages, such as Psalm xlv, 13, 14; but as some people read them 
under the impression of their being figurative, I need not refer to 
them. The passages in the Prophecies and Epistles against dress 
apply only to ife abuses. Dress worn for the sake of vanity or coveted 
in jealousy, is as evil as anything else similarly so abused. A woman 
should earnestly desire to be beautiful, as she should desire to be 
intelligent ; her dress should be as studied as her words ; but if the one 
is worn or the other spoken in vaniiy or insolence, both are equally 
criminal. — Ibid, 



VIII 

FICTION— FAIR AND FOUL. 
One Vol. (1880-1.) 

Here, at least, is one Ruskin title which fairly suggests the sub- 
ject of the volume. 

This little work of 65 pages was originally written in five articles 
and published in the Nineteenth Century Magazine, and afterwards 
reprinted in a volume bearing the title of "On the Old Road" which 
also contained other Magazine articles. Ruskin expresses contempt 
for certain forms of fiction which he calls "the Divinity of Decompo- 
sition." Here we find one of his most graphic pictures of contrast 
between country life and life in a great city : — "In the country every 
morning of the year brings with it a new aspect of springing or fad- 
ing nature ; a new duty to be fulfilled upon earth, and a new promise 
or warning in heaven. No day is without its innocent hope, its spe- 
cial prudence, its kindly gift, and its sublime danger; and in every 
process of wise husbandry, and every effort of contending or remedial 
courage, the wholesome passions, pride, and bodily power of the la- 
bourer are excited and exerted in the happiest unison. The compan- 
ionship of domestic, the care of serviceable, animals, soften and en- 
large his life with lowly charities, and discipline him in familiar 
wisdoms and unboastful fortitudes ; while the divine laws of seed-time 
which cannot be recalled, harvest which cannot be hastened, and 
winter in which no man can work, compel the impatiences and covet- 
ing of his heart into labour too submissive to be anxious, and rest too 
sweet to be wanton. What thought can enough comprehend the 
contrast between such life, and that in streets where summer and 
winter are only alternations of heat and cold ; where snow never fell 
white, nor sunshine clear; where the ground is only a pavement, 
and the sky no more than the glass roof of an arcade; where the 
utmost power of a storm is to choke the gutters, and the finest magic 
of spring, to change mud into dust; where — chief and most fatal 
difference in state, there is no interest of occupation for any of the 

398 



RELIGIOUS LESSONS IN POLITICAL ECONOMY 399 

inhabitants but the routine of counter or desk within doors, and the 
effort to pass each other without collision outside ; so ihsA from morn- 
ing to evening the only possible variation of the monotony of the 
hours, and lightening of the penalty of existence, must be some kind 
of mischief." 

A very large portion of the fiction of the present age bears a re- 
lation to literature similar to that which the business of the saloon 
keeper, the dealer in tobacco, and the picker of rags in a city alley, 
bear to merchandise. It is a traffic in the refuse and decomposition of 
human society. It is a pestilence that "walketh in darkness." 

In Ruskin's day this form of fiction was already common. 
He calls it a "literature of the prison-house, because the thwarted 
habits of body and mind, which are the punishment of reckless 
crowding in cities, become, in the issue of that punishment, fright- 
ful subjects of exclusive interest to themselves ; and the art of fiction 
in which they finally delight is only the more studied arrangement 
and illustration, by coloured firelights, of the daily bulletins of their 
own wretchedness, in the prison calendar, the police news,' and the 
hospital report." 

Scott was to Ruskin the best of all novelists. He loved him be- 
cause his teaching was lofty and his portraiture was healthy and 
vital. He says : — "It is to say little for the types of youth and maid 
which alone Scott felt it a joy to imagine, or thought it honorable 
to portray, that they act and feel in a sphere where they are never 
for an instant liable to any of the weaknesses which disturb the calm, 
or shake the resolution, of chastity and courage in a modern novel. 

. . . But there is another difference in the woof of a Waverly 
novel from the cobweb of a modern one, which depends on Scott's 
larger view of human life. Marriage is by no means, in his con- 
ception of man and woman, the most important business of their ex- 
istence; nor love the only reward to be proposed to their virtue or 
exertion. It is not in his reading of the laws of Providence a neces- 
sity that virtue should, either by love or any other external blessing, 
be rewarded at all ; and marriage is in all cases thought of as a con- 
stituent of the happiness of life, but not as its only interest, still less 
its only aim." 

It is worth while to read these pages of Ruskin's comment if only 
for his historic review and literary analysis of Scott's novels, and 
the pen portraiture which they contain of Scott himself. 



4GO TEE RELIGION OF nVSKIN 

The "fiction of death" is described by a reference to Dickens's 
Bleak House, in which novel, Ruskin pointa 'Out, "there are nine 
deaths." Oliver Twist is described fis "the greatest work of Dick- 
ens, and is distinguished "with honour^ from the loathsome mass 
to which it typically belongs." 

Ruskin's estimate of fiction is perhaps better «een in the second 
volume of Fors Clavigera (Letter 31) where he speaks of Miss 
Edgeworth, Scott, Dickens, and Thackeray. An extended account 
of the life of Scott is also given in the game volume. 



BOOK SIXTH 

Religion in Life and Poetry 



RELIGION IN LIFE AND 
POETRY 



I 

NOTES ON THE CONSTRUCTION OF SHEEPFOLDS. 

(1851.) 

These notes fill 32 pages which were published originally as a 
pamphlet and afterwards reprinted in "On the Old Road." 

It is said that farmers were attracted by its title and bought the 
book for quite another purpose than that for which it was de- 
signed.* 

The notes are evidence of a strong desire in Ruskin to witness the 
union of all Protestant Christian Churches into one organic body, — 
the special appeal however being directed to the Scotch Presbyterians 
to enter the Anglican Church, having "One fold and one Shepherd." 

It is a singular illustration of the intense desire in the mind of 
Ruskin to see things put right, and his own ever-burning desire to 
put them right. He says: — "I do not profess to teach Divinity; 
and I pray the reader to understand this, and to pardon the slight- 
ness and insufficiency of notes set down with no more intention of 
connected treatment than might regulate an accidental conversa- 
tion." Yet he goes on to discuss the Scriptural meaning of the word 
"Church:" its authority over doctrine, and for discipline: — its rela- 
tion to State and its teaching in the Scriptures, and in his lecture on 
Kings' Treasuries in "Sesame and Lilies" and Letter 13 in "Time 
and Tide" he treated of similar subjects. 

Selections from this Essay would be altogether unsatisfactory. 
It must be read as a whole in order to appreciate any part of it. We 

* Mr. J. Hain Friswell, in "Modern Men of Letters," relates a story of a 
farmer, not acquainted with books, who took to his farm, with immense gusto, 
a copy of this book, supposing it to relate to the actual construction of farm 
Bheep-folds. "His rage may be imagined," says Mr. Friswell, "when he found 
that it was a pamphlet on the discipline of the Church." 

403 



404 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

would gladly add it to this volume if space permitted, but we must 
be content to quote its closing words : — 

"Christ does not order impossibilities, and He has ordered us to be 
at peace, one with another. Nay, it is answered — He came not to 
send peace, but a sword. Yes, verily : to send a sword upon earth, 
but not within His Church ; for to His Church He said, "My Peaco 
I give unto you." 



II 

SESAME AND LILIES. 
One Vol. Three Lectures. (1868.) 

These three lectures were delivered at different times and places 
between 1864-8 and were afterwards published under the Author's 
own direction. They bore the respective titles of : — 

1. "Of the Kings' Treasuries, which means good books and 

sound study. 

2» "Of the Queens' Gardens" is addressed to young women and 
is full of noble counsel and pictures of rare literary excellence. Its 
notes 'on the women of Shakspeare, Dante, Sophocles, Spencer 
and Scott are treasures indeed. 

3. "The Mystery of Life" may be read as a pen-portrait of the 
inner life of the Author up to that time, he being then near fifty 

years of age. 

Of all the numerous works of Ruskin this is the most popular 
with the public. And no wonder! It is a delightfully readable 
book,— fit for a philosopher's library or for a gift book to any young 
graduate of our public schools. It is written in the most charming 
strain of prose-poetry,— is indeed, a classic — his wise words flowing 
as limpid as a mountain stream. 

If we were to select passages from it our difficulty would be to 
decide what to omit. And as the book may be found in almost 
every series of reprints and can be purchased for a trifle at any book- 
stand, we will only quote Mr. Ruskin's own selection. In his pre- 
face he says : "The first lecture says that life being very short, and 
the quiet hours of it very few, we ought to waste none of them in 
reading valueless books. . . . And I would urge upon every 
young man, as the beginning of his due and wise provision for his 
household, to obtain as soon as he can, by the severest^ economy, 
a restricted, serviceable, and steadily— however slowly— increasing, 
series of books for use through life; making his little library, of all 
the furniture in his room, the most studied and decorative piece; 
every volume having its assigned place, like a little statue in its 

405 



4o6 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

niche, and one of the earliest and strictest lessons to the children of 
the house being how to turn the pages of their own literary posses- 
sions lightly and deliberately, with no chance of tearing or dogs' 
ears." 

Of the second and third lectures he says: — "The entire gist and 
conclusion of them is in the last six paragraphs, which contain the 
best expression. I have yet been able to put in words of what, so far 
as is within my power, I mean henceforward both to do myself, and 
to plead with all over whom I have any influence, to do also accord- 
ing to their means." 

These six paragraphs are as follows: 

WHAT IT MEANS TO TAKE UP OUR CROSS. 

135. "The work of men" — and what is that? Well, we may 
any of us know very quickly, on the condition of being wholly ready 
to do it. But many of us are for the most part thinking, not of 
what we are to do, but of what we are to get ; and the best of us are 
sunk into the sin of Ananias, and it is a mortal one — we want to 
keep back part of the price; and we continually talk of taking up 
our cross, as if the only harm in a cross was the weight of it — as if 
it was only a thing to be carried, instead of to be — crucified upon. 
"They that are His have crucified the flesh, with the affections 
and lusts." Does that mean, think you, that in time of national dis- 
tress, of religious trial, of crisis for every interest and hope of 
humanity — none of us will cease jesting, none cease idling, none 
put themselves to any wholesome work, none take so much as a tag 
of lace off their footman's coats, to save the world? Or does it 
rather mean, that they are ready to leave houses, lands and kin- 
dreds — yes, and life if need be? Life! — some of us are ready 
enough to throw that away, joyless as we have made it. But ^'station 
in Life" — how many of us are ready to quit thatf Is it not always 
the great objection, where there is question of finding something use- 
ful to do — "We cannot leave our stations in Life?" 

Those of us who really cannot — that is to say, who can only main- 
tain themselves by continuing in some business or salaried office, 
have already something to do ; and all that they have to see to, is that 
they do it honestly and with all their might. But with most people 
who use that apology, "remaining in the station of life to which 
Providence has called them," means keeping all the carriages, and 
all the footmen and large houses they can possibly pay for; and, once 
for all, I say that if ever Providence did put them into stations ^of 
that sort — which is not at all a matter of certainty — Providence is 
just now very distinctly calling them out again. Levi's station in 
life was the receipt of custom; and Peter's, the shore of Galilee; 



RELIGION IN LIFE AND POETRY 407 

and Paul's, the ante-chambers of the High Priest, — which "station 
in life" each had to leave, with brief notice. 

And, whatever our station in life may be, at this crisis, those of us 
who mean to fulfill our duty ought, first, to live on as little as we can ; 
and, secondly, to do all the wholesome work for it we can, and to 
spend all we can spare in doing all the sure good we can. 

And sure good is first in feeding people, then in dressing people, 
then in lodgmg people, and lastly in rightly pleasing people, with 
arts, or sciences, or any other subject of thought. 

FEEDING THE HUNGRY. 

136. I say first in feeding; and, once for all, do not let your- 
selves be deceived by any of the common talk of "indiscriminate 
charity." The order to us is not to feed the deserving hungry, nor 
the industrious hungry, nor the amiable and well-intentioned hun- 
gry, but simply to feed the hungry. It is quite true, infallibly 
true, that if any man will not work, neither should he eat — think 
of that, and every time you sit down to your dinner, ladies and 
gentlemen, say solemnly, before you ask a blessing, "How much 
work have I done today for my dinner?" 

CLOTHING THE NEEDY. 

137. Secondly, dressing people — that is to say, urging every one 
within reach of your influence to be always neat and clean, and giv- 
ing them means of being so. In so far as they absolutely refuse, you 
must give up the effort with respect to them, only taking care that 
no children within your sphere of influence shall any more be 
brought up with such habits; and that every person who is willing 
to dress with propriety shall have encouragement to do so. And 
the first absolutely necessary step towards this is the gradual adop- 
tion for a consistent dress for different ranks of persons, so that their 
rank shall be known by their dress; and the restriction of the 
changes of fashion within certain limits. All which appears for 
the present quite impossible; but it is only so far as even difficult 
as it is difficult to conquer our vanity, frivolity, and desire to appear 
what we are not. And it is not, nor ever shall be, creed of mine, 
that these mean and shallow vices are unconquerable by Christian 
women. 

HOMES FOR THE PEOPLE. 

138. And then, thirdly, lodging people, which you may think 
should have been put first, but I put it third, because we must feed 
and clothe people where we find them, and lodge them afterwards. 
And providing lodgment for them means a great deal of vigorous 
legislation, and cutting down of vested interests that stand in the 
way, and after that, or before that, so far as we can get it, thorough 
sanitary and remedial action in the houses that we have; and then 



4o8 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

the building of more, strongly, beautifully, and in groups of limited 
extent, kept in proportion to their streams, and walled round, so 
that there may be no festering and wretched suburb anywhere, 
but clean and busy street within, and the open country without, 
with a belt of beautiful garden and orchard round the walls, so that 
from any part of the city perfectly fresh air and grass, and sight of 
far horizon might be reachable in a few minutes' walk. This the 
final aim; but in immediate action every minor and possible good 
to be instantly done when, and as, we can ; roofs mended that have 
holes in them — fences patched that have gaps in them — walls 
buttressed that totter — and floors propped that shake: cleanliness 
and order enforced with our own hands and eyes, till we are breath- 
less, every day. And all the fine arts will heathily follow. I 
myself have washed a flight of stone stairs all down, with bucket and 
broom, in a Savoy inn, where they hadn't washed their stairs since 
they first went up them? and I never made a better sketch than 
that afternoon. 

WORK FOR EVERYONE. 

139. The law for every Christian man and woman is, that they 
shall be in direct service towards one of these three needs, as far 
as is consistent with their own special occupation, and if they have 
no special business, then wholly in one of these services. And out 
of such exertion in plain duty all other good will come; for in this 
direct contention with material evil, you will find out the real 
nature of all evil ; you will discern by the various kinds of resistance, 
what is really the fault and main antagonism to good ; also you will 
find the most unexpected helps and profound lessons given, and 
truths will come thus down to us which the speculation of all our 
lives would never have raised us up to. You will find nearly every 
educational problem solved, as soon as you truly want to do some- 
thing; everybody will become of use in their own fittest way, and 
will learn what is best for them to know in that use. Competitive 
examination will then, and not till then, be wholesome, because it 
will be daily, and calm, and in practice; and on these familiar arts, 
and minute, but certain and serviceable knowledges, will be surely 
edified and sustained the greater arts and splendid theoretical 
sciences. 

AN INFALLIBLE RELIGION. 

140. But much more than this. On such holy and siniple 
practice will be founded, indeed, at last^ an infallible religion. 
The greatest of all the mysteries of life, and the most terrible, is 
the corruption of even the sincerest religion, which is not daily 
founded on rational, effective, humble, and helpful action. Help- 
ful action, observe! for there is just one law, which obeyed, keeps 
all religions pure — forgotten, makes them all false. Whenever in 
any religious faith, dark or bright, we allow our minds to dwell 



RELIGION IN LIFE AND POETRY 409 

upon the points in which we differ from other people, we are wrong, 
and in the devil's power. That is the essence of the Pharisee's 
thanksgiving — "Lord, I thank thee that I am not as other men are." 
At every moment of our lives we should be trying to find out not in 
what we differ with other people, but in what we agree with them; 
and the moment we find we can agree as to anything that should be 
done, kind or good, (and who but fools couldn't?) then do it; push 
at it together; you can't quarrel in a side-by-side push; but the 
moment that even the best men stop pushing, and begin talking, 
they mistake their pugnacity for piety, and it's all over. I will not 
speak of the crimes which in past times have been committed in the 
name of Christ, nor of the follies which are at this hour held to be 
consistent with obedience to Him ; but I will speak of the morbid 
corruption and waste of vital power in religious sentiment, by 
which the pure strength of that which should be the guiding soul 
of every nation, the splendour of its youthful manhood, and spot- 
less light of its maidenhood, is averted or cast away. 

We once taught our youths to make Latin verses, and called 
them educated ; now we teach them to leap and to row, to hit a ball 
with a bat, and call them educated. Can they plow, can they sow, 
can they plant at the right time, or build with a steady hand? Is 
it the effort of their lives to be chaste, knightly, faithful, holy in 
thought, lovely in word and deed? Indeed it is, with some, nay 
with many, and the strength of England is in them, and the hope : 
but we have to turn their courage from the toil of war to the toil of 
mercy; and their intellect from dispute of words to discernment 
of things; and their knighthood from the errantry of adventure to 
the state and fidelity of a kingly power. And then, indeed, shall 
abide, for them, and for us an incorruptible felicity, and an infalli- 
ble religion; shall abide for us Faith, no more to be assailed by 
temptation, no more to be defended by wrath and by fear; — shall 
abide with us Hope, no more to be quenched by the years that over- 
whelm, or made ashamed by the shadows that betray; shall abide 
for us, and with us, the greatest of these; the abiding will, the 
abiding name, of our Father. For the greatest of these, is Charity. 



Ill 

THE PLEASURES OF ENGLAND. 
Four Lectures. (1884.) 

These lectures, delivered at Oxford, were supplementary to those 
given in the same place on "The Art of England" one year earlier. 
They treat of the advancement of Christianity in Britain. The 
titles of the lectures are : — 

1. The Pleasures of Learning. 

2. The Pleasures of Faith. 

3. The Pleasures of Deed. 

4. The Pleasures of Fancy. 

In their delivery Mr. Ruskin referred his hearers to the lecture on 
"The Future of England" given in 1869 and is published in the 
volume entitled "The Crown of Wild Olive." 

This is one of the lesser works which do not fall so readily into 
our plan of selections but should be read as a whole. The following 
extracts however are specially commended : — 

THE INFLUENCE OP THE STORY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

I have always been by my own feeling disposed to hold the 
mythologies founded on the love and knowledge of the natural 
world, I have also been led by them to conceive, far more forcibly 
than hitherto, the power which the story of Christianity possessed, 
first heard through the wreaths of that cloudy superstition, in the 
substitution, for its vaporescent allegory, of a positive and literal 
account of a real Creation, and an instantly present, omnipresent, 
and compassionate God. . . . And it was precisely, observe, 
the vivacity and joy with which the main fact of Christ's life was 
accepted which gave the force and wrath to the controversies in- 
stantly arising about its nature. 

Those controversies vexed and shook, but never undermined, the 
faith they strove to purify, and the miraculous presence, errorless 
precept, and loving promises of their Lord were alike undoubted, 
alike rejoiced in, by every nation that heard the word of Apostles. 
The Pelagian's assertion that immortality could be won by man's 
■will, and the Arian's that Christ possessed no more than man's 

410 



RELIGION IN LIFE AND POETRY 411 

nature, never for an instant — or in any country — hindered the 
advance of the moral law and intellectual hope of Christianity. 
Far the contrary; the British heresy concerning Free Will, though 
it brought bishop after bishop into England to extinguish it, 
remained an extremely healthy and active element in the British 
mind down to the days of John Bunyan and the guide Great Heart, 
and the calmly Christian justice and simple human virtue of Theo- 
doric were the very roots and first burgeons of the regeneration of 
Italy. — Lect. I. 

WORLDLY PROSPERITY AND RELIGION. 

You are in the habit of supposing that temporal prosperity is 
owing either to worldly chance or to worldly prudence ; and is never 
granted in any visible relation to states of religious temper. Put 
that treacherous doubt away from you, with disdain ; take for basis 
of reasoning the noble postulate, that the elements of Christian 
faith are sound, — instead of the base one, that they are deceptive; 
reread the great story of the world in that light, and see what a 
vividly real, yet miraculous tenor, it will then bear to you. — 
Lect. II. 

THE PLEASURES OF FAITH. 

We continually hear of the trials, sometimes of the victories, of 
Faith, — but scarcely ever of its pleasures. Whereas, at this time, 
you will find that the chief delight of all good men was in the recog- 
nition of the goodness and wisdom of the Master, who had come to 
dwell with them upon earth. It is almost impossible for you to con- 
ceive the vividness of this sense in them ; it is totally impossible for 
you to conceive the comfort, peace, and force of it. In everything 
that you now do or seek, you expose yourselves to countless miseries 
of shame and disappointment, because in your doing you depend on 
nothing but your own powers, and in seeking choose only your own 
gratification. . . . The idea of doing anything except for your 
own praise or profit has narrowed itself into little more than the 
precentor's invitation to the company with little voice and less prac- 
tice to "sing to the praise and glory of God." — Lect. II. 

FAITH VOLUNTARY. 

I have said that you cannot imagine the feeling of the energy of 
daily life applied in the real meaning of those words. You can- 
not imagine it, but you can prove it. Are any of you wiUing, sim- 
ply as a philosophical experiment in the greatest sciences, to adopt 
the principles and feelings of these men of a thousand years ago for 
a given time, say for a year? It cannot possibly do you any harm 
to try, and you cannot possibly learn what is true in these things, 
without trying. If after a year's experience of such method you 
find yourself no happier than before, at least you will be able to 



412 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

support your present opinions at once with more grace and more 
modesty ; having conceded the trial it asked for, to the opposite side. 
. . . Were faith not voluntary, it could not be praised, and 
would not be rewarded. — Lect. II. 

FREEDOM IN ITS FULNESS. 

If you are minded thus to try, begin each day with Alfred's 
prayer, — fiat voluntas tua; resolving that you will stand to it, and 
that nothing that happens in the course of the day shall displease 
you. . . . Imagine that the thing is being done through you, 
not by you: that the good of it may never be known, but that at 
least, unless by your rebellion or foolishness, there can come no 
evil into it, nor wrong chance to it. Resolve also with steady indus- 
try to do what you can for the help of your country and its honour, 
and the honour of its God ; and that you will not join hands in its 
iniquity, nor turn aside from its misery ; and that in all you do and 
feel you will look frankly for the immediate help and direction, 
and to your own consciences, expressed approval, of God. Live 
thus, and believe, and with swiftness of answer proportioned to the 
frankness of the trust, most surely the God of hope will fill you 
with all joy and peace in believing. 

But, if you will not do this, if you have not courage nor heart 
enough to break away the fetters of earth, and take up the sensual 
bed of it, and walk; if you say that you are bound to win this 
thing, and become the other thing, and that the wishes of your 
friends, — and the interests of your family, — and the bias of your 
genius, — and the expectations of your college, — and all the rest of 
the bow-wow-wow of the wild dog-world, must be attended to, 
whether you like it or no, — then, at least, for shame give up talk 
about being free or independent creatures; recognize yourselves for 
slaves in whom the thoughts are put in ward with their bodies, and 
their hearts manacled with their hands: and then at least also, for 
shame, if you refuse to believe that ever there were men who gave 
their souls to God, — know and confess how surely there are those 
who sell them to His adversary. — Lcct. II, 



IV 

PRAETERITA. 

Three Vols. (1885-9.) 

Ruskin had given many glimpses of his own life story in 'Tors 
Clavigera." Later in life he determined to write a series of remi- 
niscences which might form a more complete autobiography. These 
he published in two volumes under the title of "Praeterita," or 
"Bygones." To this he added a volume of Correspondence which 
he called "Dilecta." In his preface, dated May 10, 1885, he wrote: 
— "I write these few prefatory words on my father's birthday, in 
what was once my nursery in his old house, — to which he brought 
my mother and me, sixty-two years since, I being then four years 
old. What would otherwise, in the following pages, have been little 
more than an old man's recreation in gathering visionary flowers in 
fields of youth, has taken, as I wrote, the nobler aspect of a dutiful 
offering at the grave of parents who trained my childhood to all the 
good it could attain, and whose memory makes declining life cheer- 
ful in the hope of being soon again with them." 

In view of such a charming life-story as we find here, it seems 
somewhat superfluous, if not presumptuous, to write any other. 
And yet our own brief sketch is but a commendation of the story, 
told as only Ruskin could tell it. 

There is so much in Praeterita which we could add to our already 
voluminous selections from the colossal works of Ruskin that we 
feel it better to advise, young people especially, to secure the reading 
of a copy. It can be found (in one volume) in almost any good pub- 
lic library. It will be found to possess all the charm of the most 
attractive novel, while it abounds in the delightful prose-poetry and 
philosophy of which Ruskin was the greatest master. 

We give only a reference and quotation from the Poet, George 
Herbert, and the brilliant passage with which the author closes the 
work. In it he refers to his very intimate American friend, Prof. 
Charles Eliot Norton, to whom we are told is due the credit of sug- 

413 



414 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

gesting to its distinguished author the writing of this — one of the 
few really brilliant autobiographies in the EngUsh language. 

WHAT CHRISTIANITY IS ! GEORGE HERBERT QUOTED. 

"I find numbers, even of the most intelligent and amiable people, 
not knowing what the word (Christianity) means, because they are 
always asking how much is true, and how much they like, and 
never ask first, what was the total meaning of it, whether they like 
it or not. The total meaning was and is, that the God who made 
earth and its creatures, took at a certain time upon the earth, the 
flesh and form of man ; in that flesh sustained the pain and 
died the death of the creature He had made ; rose again after death 
into glorious life, and when the date of the human race is ended, 
will return in visible human form, and render to every man accord- 
ing to his work. Christianity is the belief in, and love of, God thus 
manifested. Anything less than this, the mere acceptance of the 
sayings of Christ, or assertion of any less than divine power in His 
Being, may be, for aught I know, enough for virtue, peace, and 
safety; but they do not make people Christians, or enable them to 
understand the heart of the simplest believer in the old doctrine. 
One verse more of George Herbert will put the height of that doc- 
trine into less debatable, though figurative, picture than any long 
talk of mine: — 

Hast thou not heard that my Lord Jesus died? 

Then let me tell thee a strange story. 
The God of Power, as he did ride 
In his majestic robes of glory, 

Resolved to light ; and so, one day 

He did descend, undressing all the way. 

Th« stars his tire of light, and rings, obtained 

The cloud his bow, the fire his spear, 
The heavens his azure mantle gained. 

And when they asked what he would wear, 
He smiled and said as he did go, 
"He had new clothes a-making, here, below." 

T write from memory; the lines have been my lesson ever since 
1845." 

CLOSING WORDS. 

How things bind and blend themselves together I The last time 
I saw the Fountain of Trevi, it was from Arthur's father's room — 
Joseph Severn's, where we both took Joannie to see him in 1872, 
and the old man made a sweet drawing of his pretty daughter-in- 
law, now in her schoolroom ; he himself then eager in finishing his 
last picture of the Marriage in Cana, which he had caused to take 
place under a vine trellis, and delighted himself by painting 
the crystal and ruby glittering of the changing rivulet of water out 



RELIGION IN LIFE AND POETRY 415 

of the Greek vase, glowing into wine. Fronte Branda I last saw 
with Charles Norton, under the same arches where Dante saw it. 
We drank of it together, and walked together that evening on the 
hills above, where the fireflies among the scented thickets shone 
fitfully in the still undarkened air. How they shone I moving like 
fine-broken starlight through the purple leaves. How they shone 1 
through the sunset that faded into thunderous night as I entered 
Siena three days before, the white edges of the mountainous clouds 
still lighted from the west, and the openly golden sky calm behind 
the Gate of Siena's heart with its still golden words, "Cor magis 
tiba Sena pandit," and the fireflies everywhere in sky and cloud ris- 
ing and falling, mixed with the lightning and more intense than 
the stars. 



MUSIC. 

Ruskin's Preface to Vol. II of Bibliotheca Pastorum is an able 
treatise on the subject of Music. He says: 

"The law of nobleness in music and poetry is essentially one. 
Both are the necessary and natural expression of pure and virtuous 
human joy, or sorrow, by the lips and fingers of persons trained in 
right schools to manage their bodies and souls. Every child should 
be taught from its youth, to govern its voice discreetly and dex- 
terously, as it does its hands; and not to be able to sing should be 
more disgraceful than not being abk to read or write. For it is 
quite possible to lead a virtuous and happy life without books, or 
ink ; but not without wishing to sing when we are happy ; nor with- 
out meeting with continual occasions when our song, if right, would 
be a kind service to others. 

The best music, like the best painting, is entirely popular; it at 
once commends itself to everyone, and does so through all ages. The 
worst music, like the worst painting, commends itself at first, in 
like manner, to ninety-nine people out of a hundred, but after do- 
ing its appointed quantity of michief it is forgotten, and new modes 
of mischief composed." 



POEMS. 

While the fame of Ruskin as a prose-poet is universally recog- 
nised, it is not so generally known that, in his early days, he wrote 
many poems which gave promise of rare poetic genius and had his 
mind not turned towards the work which called for prose, it seems 
quite likely that he would have ranked among the greater poets of 
the world. It seems, indeed, to have been forgotten that, after the 
death of Tennyson, he was openly named as the poet-laureate of 
England. 

As it is, his numerous lines, if all were collected, would reach the 
bulk of a considerable volume. Some of them are of a very 
high order, although written in his earliest years of literary work. 
Saltzburg was written in his sixteenth year, and in 1845, when 
Ruskin was yet only twenty-six, he wrote the fine poem on "The 
Grande Chartreuse" the whole of which we give in these pages. 
Of this poem he wrote: "These verses — . . . . the last rhymes 
I attempted in any seriousness were nevertheless extremely earnest, 
and express, with more boldness and simplicity than I feel able to 
use now, the real temper in which I began the best work of my life." 

"Salsette and Elephanta" is the poem which won for him the 
coveted Newdigate prize at Oxford and is written in nearly 300 
lines. 

"The Broken Chain" is a lengthy poem of a life's story, reflecting 
the Author's own experience, written at different times, in five parts 
during the years 1840-3, the author being only twenty-four when he 
completed it. 

In Chapter VIII. Praeterita, Ruskin gives an analysis of Poetry 
and tells how his mind was influenced by Byron, Scott, Shakspeare, 
Pope, Homer, and others. He declares here, as he has done 
elsewhere, that "knowing the song of Moses and the sermon on the 
Mount by heart, and half the Apocalypse besides, I was in no need 
of tutorship either in the Majesty or Simplicity of English words." 

416 



RELIGION IN LIFE AND POETRY 417 

REMEMBRANCE. 

(1837.) 

When the planets roll red through the darkness of night, 
When the morning bedews all the landscape with light, 
When the high sun of noon-day is warm on the hill, 
And the breezes are quiet, the green leafage still; 

I love to look out o'er the earth and the sky. 
For nature is kind, and seems lonely as I ; 
Whatever in nature most lovely I see, 
Has a voice that recalls the remembrance of thee. 

Remember — remember. Those only can know 
How dear is remembrance, whose hope is laid low; 
'Twas like clouds in the west, that are gorgeous still. 
When the dank dews of evening fall deadly and chill. 

Like the bow in the cloud that is painted so bright,— 
Like the voice of the nightingale, heard through the night. 
Oh, sweet is remembrance, most sad though it be, 
For remembrance is all that remaineth for me. 



LIFE AND DEATH WITHOUT HOPE. 

(1837.) 
(The Gypsies.) 
*Midst the wandering tribe, no reverenced shrine 
Attests a knowledge of the Power Divine. 
By these alone, of mortals most forlorn, 
Are priest and pageant met with only scorn ; 
To all mankind beside, 'through earth and sky. 
Is breathed an influence of Deity. 
To that great One, whose Spirit interweaves 
The pathless forests with their life of leaves; 
And lifts the lowly blossoms, bright in birth. 
Out of the cold, black, rotting charnel earth ; 
Walks on the moon-bewildered waves by night. 
Breathes in the morning breeze, bums in the evening light; 
Feeds the young ravens when they cry ; uplifts 
The pale-lipped clouds along the mountain clifts; 
Moves the pale glazier on his restless path ; 
Lives in the desert's universal death. 
And fills, with that one glance, which none elude, 
The grave, the city and the solitude. 

Oh, life most like to death ! No mother mild 

Lifts the light fingers of her dark-eyed child 

In early offered prayer ; no loving one 

Curtains the cradle round with midnight orison; 

Nor guides, to form the Mighty Name, the slips 

And early murmurs of unconscious lips. 

No reverend sire, with tales of heavenly truth, 

Instructs the awed, attentive ear of youth. 

Through life's short span, whatever chance betide, 

No hope can joy, no fear can guard or guide, i 

No trust supports in danger or despair; 

Grief hath no solace, agony no prayer. 



4i8 ' THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

The lost are lost forever, and the grave 

Is as a darkness deep, whence none can save. 

The loved or the lamented, as they fade, 

Like dreams at dawn, into that fearful shade. 

Oh ! then what words are they whose peaceful power 

Can soothe the twilight time of terror's hour; 

Or check the frighted gasp of fainting breath ; 

Or clothe with calmness the cold lips of death ; 

Or quench the fire within the frenzied eye, 

When it first dreams the dreams that never die? 

O Grave, how fearful is thy victory ! 

O Death, how dread thy sting, when not to be 

Is the last hope 

Such death is death indeed which nor bestows 
Peace on the soul, nor on the clay repose. 



REDEMPTION FOR INDIA. 
(1839.) 

"Night's fitful visions fly — • 
Like autumn leaves, and fade from fancy's eye, 
So shall the God of might and mercy dart 
His day-beams through the caverns of the heart; 
Strike the weak idol from its ancient throne, 
And vindicate the temple for His own. 
Nor will he long delay." .... 

"It comes, the hallowed day, 
Whose dawn shall rend that robe of fear away ; 
Then shall the torturing rpells that midnight knew 
Far in the cloven dells of Mont Meru, 
Then shall the moan of frenzied hymns, that sighed 
Down the dark vale where Gunga's waters glide, 
Then shall the idle chariot's thunder cease 
Before the steps of them that publish peace. 
Already are they heard, — ^^how fair and fleet! 
Along the mountains flash their bounding feet! 
Disease and death before their presence fly : 
Truth calls, and gladdened India hears the cry. 
Deserts the darkened path her fathers trod, 
And seeks redemption from the Incarnate God. 

— From "Salsette and Elephanta." 



THE PATH TO GOD. 

(1840.) 

"Lady, the fields of earth are wide, 

And tempt an infant's foot to stray : 
Oh ! lead thy loved one's steps aside. 

Where the white altar lights his way. 
Around his path shall glance and glide, 

A thousand shadows false and wild ; 
Oh ! lead him to that surer Guide. 

Than sire serene, or mother mild. 
Whose childhood quelled the age of pride, 

Whose Godhead called the little child." 



RELIGION IN LIFE AND POETRY 419 

*'So when thy breast of love untold. 

That warmed his sleep of infancy, 
Shall only make the marble cold, 

Beneath his aged knee ; 
From its steep throne of heavenly gold 

Thy soul shall stoop to see 
His grief, that cannot be controlled, 

Turning to God from thee — 
Cleaving with prayer the cloudy fold. 

That veils the sanctuary." 

—From "The Two Paiht." 

WHERE DEATH IS. 

(1840.) 
*'Where the flower hath fairest hue, 

Where the breeze hath balmiest breath, 
Where the dawn hath softest dew. 
Where the heaven hath deepest blue 

There is death. 
Where the gentle streams of thinking, 

Through our tears that flow so free, 
Have the deepest, softest sinking 

And the fullest melody ; 
Where the crown of hope is nearest. 
Where the voice of joy is clearest, 
Where the heart of youth is lightest. 
Where the light of love is brightest, 

There is death." 

—From "The Broken Chain." 

CHARITIE. 

(1842.) 
1 Cor. IS. 

God guides the stars their wanderiog way, , 

He seems to cast their courses free, 
But binds unto himself for aye ; 

And all their chains are Charitie. 



The violets light the lonely hill. 
The fruitful furrows load the lea: 

Man's heart alone is sterile still, 
For lack of lowly Charitie. 

He walks a weary vale within — 
No lamp of love in heart hath he; 

His steps are death, his thoughts are sin. 
For lack of gentle Charitie. 

Daughter of Heaven ! we dare not lift 
The dimness of our eyes to thee ; 

Ob ! pure and God-descended gift ! 
Oh ! spotless, perfect Charitie ! 

Yet forasmuch thy brow is crossed 

With blood-drops from the deathful tree. 

We take from thee our only trust 
Oh! dying Charitie! 



4S0 



TEE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

Ah! Hope, Endurance, Faith — ^y« fail like dekOi, 
But Love an everlasting crown receiveth ; 

Tor she is Hope, and Fortitude, and Faith, 
Who all things hopeth, beareth and beliereth. 



THB OLD SEAMAN. 

(1844.) 

Ton ask me why mine eyes are bent 
So darkly on the sea, 
While others watch the asure hills 
That lengthen on the lee. 

The azure hills — they soothe the sight 

That fails along the foam ; 
And those may hail their nearing height 

Who there have hope, or home. 

But I a loveless path have trod— • 

A beaconless career ; 
My hope hath long been all with God, 

And all my home is — here. 

The deep by day, the heaven by night, 

Roll onward swift and dark; 
Nor leave my soul the dove's delight, 
Of olive branch, or ark. 

For more than gale, or gulf, or sand, 
I've proved that there may be 

Worse treachery on the steadfast land. 
Than variable sea. 

A danger worse than bay or beach—* 

A falsehood more unkind — 
The treachery of a governed speech. 

And an ungoverned mind. 

The treachery of the deadly mart 
Where human souls are sold ; 

The treachery of the hollow heart 
That crumbles as we hold. 

Those holy hills and quiet lakes— 
Ah ! wherefore should I find 

This weary fever-fit, that shakes 
Their image in my mind. 

The memory of a streamlet's din, 
Through meadows daisy drest— 

Another might be glad therein, 
And yet I cannot rest. 

I cannot rest unless it be 
Beneath the churchyard yew; 

But God, I think, hath yet for me 
More earthly work to do. 



RELIGION IN LIFE AND POETRY. 421 



And therefore with a quiet will, 

I breathe the ocean air, 
And bless the Toice that calls me still 

To wander and to bear. 

Let others seek their native sod, 
Who there have hearts to cheer; 

My Boul hath long been given to God. 
And all my home — is here. 



JUDGMENT DAY. 

(1844.) 

"In the unconnted day. 
When earth shall tremble as the trump unwraps 

Their sheets of slumber from the crumbling dead 
And the quick, thirsty fire of judgment laps 

The loud sea from the hollow of his bed — 
Shall not your God spare you, to whom He gave 

No share nor shadow of man's crime, or fate; 

Nothing to render, nor to expiate ; 
Untainted by his life — untrusted with his grave?" 

—From Poem on "The Alpi.** 



THE GRANDE CHARTREUSE. 

MONT BLANC BEVIBITED. 
(1845.) 

O mount beloved, mine eyes again 
Behold the twilight's sanguine stala 
Along thy ireaks erpire. 

mount beloved, thy frontier waste 

1 seek with a religious baste 
And reverent desire. 

They meet me, 'midst thy shadows eold,a«» 
Sach thoughts as holy men of old 

Amid the desert found ; — 
Such gladness, as in Him they felt 
Who with them through the darkness dwelt, 

And compassed all around. 

Ah, happy, if His will were so, 
To give me manna here for snow, 

And by the torrent side 
To lead me as He leads His flocks 
Of wild deer through the lonely rocks 

In peace, unterrified. 

IKnce, from the things that trustfol reat^ 
The partridge on her purple nest. 

The marmot in his den, 
God wins a worship more resigned, 
A purer praise than He can find 

Upon the lips of men. 



4sa 



TEE RELIGION OF RUSKIN. 

Alfts for man ! who hath no sense 
Of gratefalness nor confidence, 

But still regrets and raves. 
Till all God's love can scarcely win 
One soul from taking pride in sin, 

And pleasure over graves. 

Tet let me not, like him who trod 
In wrath, of old, the mount of God, 

Forget the thousands left; 
Lest haply, when I seek His face, 
The whirlwind of the cave replace 

The glory of the cleft. 

Tet teach me, God, a milder thought, 
Lest I, of all Thy blood has bought. 

Least honourable be ; 
And this that leads me to condemn. 
Be rather want of love for them 

Than jealousy for Thee. 



THE GLACIER. 

(1845.) 
The mountains have a peace which none disturfy— 

The stars and clouds a course which none restrain—* 
The wild sea-waves rejoice without a curb. 

And rest without a passion ; but the chain 
Of Death, upon, this ghastly cliff and chasm 

Is broken evermore, to bind again. 

Nor lulls nor looses. Hark ! a voice of pais 
Suddenly silenced ; — a quick passing spasm. 

That startles rest, but grants not liberty,— 

A shudder, or a struggle, or a cry — 
And then sepulchral stillness. Look on us, 

God ! who hast given these hills their place of pride^ 
If Death's captivity be sleepless thus. 

For those who sink to it unsanctified. 



WRITTEN AMONG THE BASSES ALPS. 

(1845.) 

"Why stand ye here all the day idle?" 

Have yon in heaven no hope — on earth no care—" 

No foe in hell — ye things of stye and stall. 
That congregate like flies, and make the air 

Rank with your fevered sloth — .that hourly oall 
The sun, which should your servant be, to bear 
Dread witness on you, with uncounted wane 
And unregarded rays, from peak to peak 

Of piny-gnomoned mountain moved in vainf 
Behold, the very shadows that ye seek 

For slumber, write along the wasted wall 
Tour condemnation. They forget not, they. 

Their ordered function and determined fall, 
Nor useless perish. But you count your day 
By sins, and write your difference from clay 
In bonds you break and laws you disobey. 



RELIGION IN LIFE AND POETRY 423 

<5od ! who hast given the rocks their fortitude, 
The sap unto the forests, and their food 

And vigor to the busy tenantry 

Of happy soulless things that wait on Thee, 
Hast Thou no blessing where Thou gav'st Thy blood? 

Wilt Thou not make Thy fair creation whole? 
Behold and visit this Thy vine for good — 

Breathe in this human dust its living soul. 



MONT BLANC. 
(1846.) 

Ee who looks upward from the vale by night, 

When the clouds vanish and the winds are stayed. 
Forever finds, in Heaven's serenest height, 

A space that hath no stars — a mighty shade— 

A vacant form, immovably displayed. 
Steep in the unstable vault. The planets droop 

Behind it ; the fleece-laden moonbeams fade ; 
The midnight constellations, troop by troop, 
Depart and leave it with the dawn alone : 
Uncomprehended yet, and hardly known 
For finite, but by what it takes away 
Of the east's purple deepening into day. 
Still, for a time, it keeps its awful rest, 
CJold as the prophet's pile on Carmel's crest: 
Then falls the fire of God. — Far off or near. 

Earth and the sea, wide worshiping, descry 

That burning altar in the morning sky ; 
And the strong pines their utmost ridges rear. 
Moved like an ihost, in angel-guided fear 
And sudden faith. So stands the Providence 

Of God around us ; mystery of Love ! 
Obscure, unchanging, darkness and defense, — 

Impenetrable and unmoved above 
The valley of our watch ; but which shall be 

The light of Heaven hereafter, when the strife 

Of wandering stars, that rules this night of life, 
Dies in the dawning of Eternity. 



424 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

BIBLIOGRAPHY. 

The introductory heading and comment to each of the works 
treated in the foregoing pages provide the reader with an account 
of their respective character, occasion, aims and data. 

If to these be added the following titles and dates we have a gen- 
eral Ruskin Bibliography. Not that we give the particulars of 
every article he wrote, from his infancy, and the various editions 
through which they passed. If these minor matters are desired 
they may be found in a good edition of Ruskin's Works or in Col- 
lingwood's Life of John Ruskin. 

It should be borne in mind that many of his minor works were, 
wholly, or in part, a re-issue of portions of the larger works, as for 
instance "In Montibus Sanctis" is taken from "Modern Painters." 

"On the Old Road" is the title given by Ruskin to a collection of 
his miscellaneous writings, re-edited and published in two volumes. 

Collection of Poems. 1828-1845. 
Papers on Geology. 

Chamouni. 1858, Structure of the Alps. 1865, Concretions, etc 1867. 
Limestone Alps of Savoy. 1884. Catalogue of Specimens. 1884. 

The Elements of English Prosody. 1880. 

The Black Arts. 1887. Arthur Burgess. 1887. 

Letters Addressed to a College Friend. 1840-45. 

Three Letters and an Essay on Literature. 1836-41, 

Leoni: — A Legend of Italy and a Letter. 1838. 

Papers on Art and Architecture. 1838-9. 

Frondes Agrestes, — Reading in "Modem Painters." 

Papers on Turner. 1857-81. 

Papere on Geology. 1858-1884. 

Art Catalogues and Guides. 1870-80. 

Prefaces to Various Books: — 

The story of Ida. 1838. Roadside Songs of Tuscany, 1884. Christ's 
Folk in the Apennine. 1886. Ulric. 1888. English School of Painting. 
1885. Na,tional Gallery Handbook. 1885. Bibliotheca Pastorum I., II., 
IV. 1876-1885. 

The Guild of St. George. 

Abstract of the Objects. 1877. General Statement. 1882. Master's Re- 
port. 1886. 
Letters to the Clergy. 1879. 

Eleven Letters, Essays and Comments. Epilogue, etc. 

On the Old Road. 

Opening of the Crystal Palace. 1854. My First Editor. 1878. Art:— 
History and Criticism. The Cestus of Aglaia. 1865-6. Parliamentary 
Evidence. 1857-60. Minor Works upon Art 1870-83. 

Notes on Natural Science. 1834-71. 
Economy. 

Home and Its Economies. 1873. Usury. 1880-5. 

An Oxford Lecture. 1878. 

Notes on a word in Shakspeare. 1878. 



INDEX 



The lines printed in capitals refer to titles of Ruskin's books. 

Pae« 
Aaron, Moses and, 141 ; death of, 142. 

A Christmas Homily 388 

A Christmas letter about Christmas 377 

A crumb of Mica as the axe of God 138 

A lesson from Roots 321 

A Jot fob Ever 337 

A suggestion to Millionaires 39 

Abraham 141 

Absolute Freedom only in Death 307 

Acland, Sir Henry 10 

Action, providence and human 341 

Acute perception of Ruskin 66 

Adam, from dust, 137 ; Eve and, 149. 

Address at Cambridge 162 

Advertising, honesty in 347 

Advice to lovers 9 

Aged, nobleness in the 278 

Air, Queen oif the 305 

All in all, Christ is 247 

All things to him that Believe 174 

Alps, lessons of the, 140 ; poetic lines of the, 422. 

America, ideal of, Ruskin's view of 40 

American, Women' federation, 39 ; the world's confidence in, 41. 

Amiens, the Bible of 60 

Amos 139 

An Infallible Religion 408 

Anarchy, a law of death 149 

Ancient Art religious — Modern Art profane 270 

Angels, wings of, 309 ; Children and, 316. 

Anxiety, forethought and 154 

Aphorisms 186 

Apocalypse, 60; Fors is Ruskin's, 374. 

Apostle, Ministry of 'the 383 

Ararat 311 

Abatba Penteuci 291 

Arch, strength and beauty in the 261 

Architect of Mountains, The 137 

Architect, the, should not live in cities 220 

Architecture the most human of all Arts 245 

Architecture, ideal of, 29 ; demands truth, 30 ; study of, 58, 284 ; not perma- 
nent, 69 ; x)oetry of, 205 ; higher domain of, 209 ; of animals, 218 ; fall of, 
219; divine and human, 232; in iron, 263. 

Abiadne Flobentina 184 

Aristotle, on the barrenness of money ,,,,,,,, t .. . 37 

425 



426 TEE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

Page 

Abbows of the Chace 187, 396 

Art, auithor and critic of, 25 ; works of Turner to Nation, 27 ; new theory of, 
28 ; study of, 58 ; no moral end in, 77 ; comparison of — Greek and Chris- 
tian, 112; future of, 116; good, 162; religion and, 167; testifies of God, 
175 ; Corruption in, 231, 273 ; love of not necessary, 239 ; truth in, 251 ; 
unity of, 273. 

Art as an Aid to Bible interpretation 197 

Art greater than Science 251 

Art gifts and Moral Character 306 

Art in Religion a failure 112, 116 

Art is Life 273 

Artist, the, ennobled by production, 42 ; function of, 252 ; everything waits for, 

276; religion and, 285. 
Artists, poor, aided by Ruskin, 39 ; how they are made, 275. 

Assimilating knowledge 25.? 

Astronomy, ministry of 91 

Athena in Heavens, Earth, Heart 305 

Athenasian creed, must not be burned for disputing it 307 

Atonement of Christ 144 

Attributes, human, divine in, 91 ; pleasure derived from Divine, 99. 

Authority of the Bible 357 

Authority of law, 38 ; of gold, 383. 

Authors, Ruskin's favorite x 

Author's, the, reasons for this book ix 

Babel, tower of 262 

Babes and Sucklings 311 

Bacon ' i. . . . 3 

Bain, the scientist 4 

Barrabas preferred 349 

Barrow, theology of 89 

Be sufficient for Thyself 177 

Beauty, Christ and law of, 26 ; difficulty and, 78 ; truth and, 79, 262 ; Ideas 
of, 79 ; divine power for, 86 ; centred in the heart, 92 ; love and, 99 ; moral 
judgment, standard of, 100 ; social culture and, 102 ; pride and, 105 ; 
sensuality and, 105 ; of grass, 121 ; of leaf, of cloud, 147 ; lamp of, 208, 
221 ; types of in nature, 221. 

Beauty of Religion in Women 327 

Beauty in Natural things 186 

Beauty in Nature, expression of the Divine 98 

Be sufficient for Thyself 177 

Beecher, H. Ward 3 

Beever, the Misses, tender service of to the poor 332 

Believe, all things to him that 174 

Best things Free 124 

Bethlehem 145, 290 

Better Houses for Men and Women 225 

Betting, waste and vice of 391 

Benevolence, Ruskin's 39, 45, 48, 56 

Bible, training in the, 10 ; chapters learned, 11 ; mother took Ruskin six times 
through it, 12 ; no departure from, 54, 416 ; reverence for, 58 ; the supreme 
book, 60 ; mother's instruction in re-stated, 60 ; great men inspired by, 
70; Shakspeare and the, 70; truth of, 92, 126, 303; mountains and the, 
141 ; Eagle's nest, 176 ; books of the, 194 ; meaning of the, 194 ; need of 
knowing the, 195 ; influence of, 196 ; Art as an aid to, 197 ; honest readers 
of the, 196; history and literature of the. 199; towers of the, 262; every- 
thing in the, 263 ; weigh words of, 280 ; Venice and, 240 ; Koran and the, 
288; not superannuated book, 263; fools and the, 302; hedgehog reading 
of, 303, 317 ; Authority of, 353 ; to women, 372 ; difficult parts ^i the, 394. 



INDEX 427 

Page 

Bible of Amiens 60, 193 

Bible injunctions to Women 372 

Bibliography *24 

Birds, lectures on, 308 ; of songs, 308, 332. 

Birds and the future life 327 

Birds' nests better than their pictures 185 

Birth of Christ 290 

Bishop's salary, do not stop it because you get the worst of argument 307 

Blessed are the Peacemakers 181 

Blood, bought by 422 

Body and Soul rise or fall together 260 

Body, effect of life on, in heaven, 103 ; effect of the fall on future, 103. 

Book of Genesis 385 

Book of Job and The Sermon on the Mount (see Job) 125 

Books consulted v 

Bronte, Charlotte, on the Seven Lamps 208 

Brooks, Phillips 3 

Browning, 3 ; quotation from, 24. 

Brownings, The 18 

Bryant 1-" 

Buckland, the Geologist 10 

Build for your Comfort and for the Wayfarer 263 

Building, moral virtues of 231 

Bunyan, a favorite author s 

Burgess, illustrator of Ruskin's Works 320 

Burns, Robert 12 

Butler, Mrs. Josephine E 3 

Buying, the influence of 266 

By the Good we Live, by the bad we Die 354 

By Searching we cannot find out God 130 

Byron 12 

Calling of Matthew 297 

Calvary, Christ and 13* 

Cana, Marriage at 1^^ 

Capernaum • • • 1^^ 

Capital, its function 47, 305 

Cardinal Manning, friendship with 58 

Carpaccio 395 

Carlyle, Hi, x, 17, 24, 57; joined hands with, 34; his preference of Ruskin's 
works, 66; his death no sorrow to Ruskin, 65; favorite work of Rus- 
kin's 176 ; unstinted praise of, 301, 352 ; work inscribed -to, 353. 
Catholic, gift to church, 58 ; Ruskin not a, 59. 

Causes of War 125 

Century, Twentieth, lived to see its dawn 71 

Change, in religious life, 55, 114 ; in Nature eternal, 81. 
Character, Ruskin's Moral. 56 ; language and, 171 ; art and, 306. 
Charity, justice and, 21, 265 ; greater than all besides, 420. 

Chariots of God J^2 

Charlotte Bronte, on the seven bright stars ^US 

Cheerfulness in the grass 121 

Child, father of the man, 77 ; duty of the, 294. 

Child, every, should be taught -to sing 415 

Childhood Character V^Ai 

Childhood, youth and. of Ruskin, 3; truth and, 77; Christianity and, 191; 
Christmas and, 378. 

Children's guardian Angels ^1^ 

Choice of a Permanent Home -^^^ 

Choice, the power of J^^ 

Christ at Lake of Galilee — Peter's bold swim Ho 



428 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

Pace 

Christ in Natural Scenery 268 

Christ was All in All to early Christians 247 

Christ, laws of, necessary to beauty, 26 ; men sell him, 58 ; forgiveness of, 
58 ; light of the world, the, 71 ; prayer of, 96 ; the risen, 112 ; not repre- 
sented in art, 112 ; the mountains and, 118 ; temptation and transfigura- 
tion of, 119, 144 ; sermon on the mount, 124 ; Calvary and, 134 ; divinity 
of, 144 ; atonement of, 144 ; passion of, 168 ; giver of light, 179 ; light 
of the world, 188 ; words of, quote:., 194, 237 ; person and office, 249 ; rock, 
righteousness, holiness, liberty, wisdom of, 249 ; his teaching perverted, 
255 ; the lilies and, 267 ; meandng in words of, 295 ; liveth in me, 297 ; 
cousins of, 298 ; his way the only true way, 355. 

Christ's Law above Money 393 

Christ's Method the best for the Nation 354 

Christ's Teaching about Money 360 

Christian art, compared, 112 ; taught 185 

Christian Catholic, Ruskin. claimed to be a 59 

Christian Poets and song-birds 308 

Christian, the, why loves nature 269 

Christian Truth, German philosophy and 126 

Christianity appeals to individual soul, 243 ; corruption of, 249 ; influence of 
story of, 410 ; what it is, 414. 

Christianity written in Deeds 200 

Christmas, 377 ; usury and, 381 ; a homily of 388 

Church, Ruskin a believer in the, 47 ; the Episcopal, 236 ; ornament of, 238 ; 
rock of the, 304 ; meaning of the word, 403. 

Church Walls as Educators 239 

Churches, of marble, 215 ; inscriptions and pictures in, 222 ; development of, 
238 ; union of, 403. 

Civilization, religion and 45 

Clergy, Letters to the, 61 ; teach what they wish to, 66. 

Close of a great Life — Turner 269 

Closing words 70, 71, 414 

Clothing the Needy 407 

Cloudy davs 59 

Clouds, God in the 129, 233, 422 

CoELi Enrarbant 331 

College and Saloon 318 

Coleridge 227 

Collingwood, 5, 18, 25 ; chosen biographer, 23 ; on Ruskin's religious life, 55, 

193 ; on Ruskin's journals, 328. 
Color, independent of human sagacity 127 ; moral relation of, 241 ; as pleas- 
sure, 262. 

Coming of Christ 62 

Common Forms the most natural 221 

Communion with Grod necessary to all 131 

Communism, law of, 44, 47 ; Scheme of, 48. 

Compete for the Future 182 

Competition, a law of death 149 

Coniston, Ruskin at 58 

Confidence in God, lack of 422 

Contentment only can Possess 154 

Contentment, simplicity and, 177; knowledge and, 252; providence and, 350. 

Consider the Work of His hands 170 

Conscience 393 

Cook, E. T., quoted 20 

Cooper, J. Fennimore 4 

Cooperation with the Divine 260 

Cost of homes for the people 39 

Cottage, cost of, 39; the, 205. 



INDEX. 429 

Pace 

CJonventional art, deteriorative power of ••• 273 

Corruirt, revelation not possible to the 151 

Corruption as seen in Art 231 

CJourtship, meaning of 9 

Covetous man cannot inherit 154 

Creation and MaKing — a difference 149 

Creator, mountain Alps and the, 137 ; travail of the, 146 ; the, 202. 

Creed of St. George's Guild 49 

Creed, Ruskin's early home, 54 ; later, 56, 59 ; of religion, 250 ; Greek, 305. 

Creeds discredited 53 

Crime, 305 ; theft the worst of, 359. 

Critics, a common fault of 76 

Crossing the bar 72 

Cross, the Ma'ster's, 168; power of the, 196; taking up the, 406. 

Ceown of Wild Olive 364 

Crucifixion, the 109 

Crystals, significance of 313 

Crystallography 301 

Cure, prevention better than 342 

Cursing and Swearing 389 

Danger of Easy Popularity, 79 ; of falsehood, 423. 

Dante, interpreter of religious truth rf 

Darwin, x, 3 ; Contemporary of Ruskin's, 10. 

Darwinism 181 

David, the brook stone and, 103 ; Samuel and, 107 ; the shepherd 222 

Dawn of day 423 

Dawson, W. J., quoted 19 

Day of Genesis 133 

Day of God, coming of 68 

Days, number of, 327 ; count sins by, 422. 

Dead Sea, a type of God's anger 143 

Dean Stanley, a competitor of Ruskin 10 

Death, Anarchy and Competition, laws of 149 

Death of Aaron and Moses 141 

Death, fear of, 254; freedom and, 307, 400; nature of, 321; by evil, 354; 

sting of, 418. 

Debt 361 

Decline of Art 271 

Decoration of the House of Worship 169 

Deeds, good and evil 306 

Definition of Sacrifice 210 

Definition of Value 35 

Degradation of art 231 

Degrees of Perfection, for Man's Sake 99 

Degrees of Perfection and Divine Order 325 

Deity, attributes of the, 97 ; takes human form, 131 ; honor of the, 210 ; 

eternity of, 250 ; influence of the, 417. 

Design in Creation 191 

Despise not our Youth 272 

Deucalion 310 

Development of Churches and Houses 238 

Devils and Angels contend for Children 316 

Dew, frost and the 312 

Diamonds and Gold do not make Happiness 302 

Dickens, Chas 4, 84, 400 

Difference of Creating and Making 149 

Difficulty of Speaking truth ^... 217 

Dilecta 413 

Direct Taxation ,.^ 38 



430 THE RELIGION OF RUSK IN 

Pape 

Discussion, Gladstone and Ruskin in a 302 

Dishonest Trading 385 

Distance, Enchantment of 233 

Diversi'ties of Religion of Divine Appointment 290 

Divine, Justice and Purity, type of, 98 ; Beauty and Expression of the, 98 ; 
attributes cannot be represented in art, 112 ; foreknowledge, 133 ; co- 
operation with the, 260. 

Divine power working for beauty 86 

Divine and Human Architecture 232 

Divine truth, message of 86 

Divinity of Christ, the 144 

Division of labor sometimes mean division of men 244 

Divorce of Mrs. Ruskin and marriage to Millais 21 

Do Justice and Judgment 367 

Doctrine of Sacrifice 189 

Doing according to Conscience 393 

Doing Good and Utopianism 264 

Domecq, Adele, Ruskin's first love 7 

Dore, Ruskin not an admirer of x 

Doubt, Henry Vandyke quoted 57 

Doubts, Tennyson on, 54 ; Ruskin'?, 57. 

Dramatic action, Ruskin as a lecturer 51 

Drawing, Elementary, Manual of 161 

Drummond, Henry 3 

Duke of Argyle 64 

Dust, the origin of life not an 182 

Duty of Science and Art 182 

Duty to coming Generations 225 

Eagle's Nest 176 

Eagle's Nest, the, quoted as evidence of religious mind, 66 ; on wisdom, 70. 

Eastlake's history of oil painting 164 

Easy popularity, dangers of 79 

Early Teaching of the Scriptures 388 

Earth, truth and action of 85 

Economy, not dissarranged by honesty 343 

Economist, Ruskin as, impossible to class him, 33; opposed to the orthodox.. 34 

Eden, garden of 323 

Edinburgh lectures 261 

Education, what it means, 43; duty of Government, 47; by Church Walls.. 239 

Effect of Life here on the Body in Heaven 103 

Effect of the Fall on the future body 103 

Elements of Human Art 186 

Elias, Moses and 145 

Eliot, George, 4 ; on Woman, 18. 

Elijah, voice of Horeb and, 111, 221 ; at the brook, 119. 

Eloquence of Seven Lamps 209 

Emerson, Carlyle to. III ; Essay on Intellect quoted, 33. 

Employment better than Punishment 396 

Encyclopedic Writings of Ruskin 23, 25, 31 

Engraving, art of 184 

Enrich the Temples 214 

Episcopal Church, Ruskin trained in, 54 ; prayers of, 63, 236 ; psalms in, 389. 

Eras of the Earth 311 

Erskine, letter by 353 

Error in Human Creeds 304 

Esdras, book of 310 

Esteem of Greater Works than our own 162 

Eternal priest and lawgiver, the 141 



INDEX 

Pare 
Eternal Truth, Ruskin fired with, 27 ; unquestioned, 53. 
Eternity, 423 ; the Deity and, 417. 

Ethics of the Dust 301 

Evangelical beliefs changed 56 

Evangelists, morbid pride of 117 

Evening, it shall be light at 70 

Every Creature of Grod is good 101 

Every Man for his work 252 

Every Man to his Own 382 

Everything waits for the Artist 276 

Everything in the Bible 263 

Evil can only produce Evil 259 

Evil, good and, in all things, 245 ; choice of, 247. 

Exercise in Play 256 

Expediency, not the law of Heaven 21 

Explanatory Notes vii 

Eyes, telescopes and, 178 ; learn what they are, 179. 

Ezekiel quoted 122, 129, 323 

Evolution. — What we haye been — What we are 292 

Fairy story 334 

Faith the Substance of true Life 201 

Faith inspires for Work 153 

Faith and hope fail like death 420 

Faith, Raskin's, at close of life, 72 ; above reason, 102 ; pleasures of, 411. 

Faith voluntary 411 

Faithfulness to Talent 83 

Falsehood always revolting, 80 ; danger of, 420. 
False, and true tastes, 94 ; in romance, the, 191. 

Fall, the 230 

Farm of St. George's Guild 50 

Father, a young girl's proper confidant, 7 ; God a Kind, 303. 

Fawcett, Ruskin opposed to political Economy of 34 

Fear, terror and holy 106 

Fiction — Fair and Foul 398 

Filial Obedience and Parental Duty 294 

Feeding the Hungry 407 

Finisher, God the only 118 

Finney, Chas. G 3 

Fire of Coals on the Shore 164 

Firmament, — 'the Genesis Account of, 128 ; God in ithe, 132. 

First Place to religion 250 

Fitness of Splendid Church ornament 238 

First things First 277 

Florence, Ruskin at 294 

Flower, Tree and Grace 320 

Flowers, study of, 320 ; Mission of, 324, 326 ; death and, 419. 

Flowers and Birds, and the Future Life 327 

Forgetting God and Punishment 256 

Forgiveness, God's and Christ's 10 

Fools, what they are for, 339; what they say, 384. 

Food, something better 350 

FoRS Clavigera 373 

Fors Clavigera, ix ; when written, 30 ; what it taught, 31 ; St. George's 

Guild reported in, 48, 50; explanation of, 374. 
Fortunes, large ones cannot honestly be made, 36; should be small, 44, 47. 

Foundations 230 

Four Theories about the Authority of the Bible 357 

Freedom, only with Restrictions, 307; in its fulness, 412. 



432 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

Page 

Friendship, romance of 264 

Friswell, J. Hain, quoted 403 

Frost, dew and the 312 

Fry, Eliz 3 

Froude, the historian 352 

Fruit, leaves and 322 

Functions of Mountains, 136 ; of the artist, 252 ; of law, 254 ; of play, 256 ; 
of roots, 320 ; of professions, 344. 

Future of Art in Relig'ious Service 116 

Future life. Buskin's view of the 65 

Galilean Teacher, the 3 

Galilee 145 

Garden of Eden 323 

Garden of God in the Nation 323 

Gehazi, leprosy of 128 

Genealogy 326 

General Principles, General Truths 75 

Generosity of Ruskin 39, 45, 48, 56, 58 

Genesis account of the Dry Land 133 

Genesis, Bible teaching began with, 11 ; the firmament, 128 ; sentence in, 246 ; 

book of, 385. 
Genius, 117; of Turner, 88; of Ruskin, 205. 

Genius, youthful 13 

Gethsamane, Jesus in 20 

Getting into Debt 361 

George, Henry, Ruskin in advance of 46 

German Philosophy not necessary to Christian Truth 126 

Gideon 283 

Girls, should consult fathers on love affairs 9 

Giotto as an Instance of Nature's lessons 222 

Giotto and his works in Padua 157 

Giotto, system of 185 

Given light, Christ the 179 

Gladstone, W. E., 3, 10 ; Ruskin compared with, 15 ; Visit to Ha warden, 63-4. 

Gladstone, Misses, Ruskin and 63 

Gladstone, Miss Mary, Correspondence with 46 

God always the same 210 

God and Mammon 363 

God demands Great Things of Great Minds 85 

God designs that all Men should Work 155 

God in the Clouds 129 

God in the Home 225 

God is Justice 152 

God honors the work of Love 215 

God Knows 297 

Crod obedient to His own Laws 218 

God reveals Himself in the Heavens 132 

God the only Finisher 118 

God visible through service 108 

God, forgiveness of, 60 ; not a dead law, 65 ; no life without, 66 ; loved the 
world, 71 ; simple faith in, 72 ; great paintings and, 78 ; Witnesses for, 89 ; 
pure in heart sees, 93 ; infinity of, 96 ; spirit of works, 98 ; every creature 
of is good 101; feair of, 106; free gifts of, 124, 252; the firmament and, 
128-30 ; takes us at our word, 131 ; as judge, 132 ; the architect of moun- 
tains, 137, 423 ; Axe of, 138 ; wiarmings of, 141 ; revelation of, 151 ; 
thoughts not as ours, 152; intends us to see 'both sides of things, 153; 
work of, 170 ; to know Him know thyself, 152 ; the temple of, 169 ; in art, 
175 ; finger of, 206 ; sacrifice and, 211 ; tithes and, 213 ; trees and, 221 ; re- 
vealed in nature, 249; wisdom of, 235; forgetting, 256; love of, 259; 



INDEX 433 

Page 
spirit of, 237 ; a father, 303 ; jewels of, 315 ; garden of, 323 ; the poor and, 
348; prepared for them that love Him, 394; the seaman's hope, 420; wor- 
ship of, 421 ; incarnation, redemption of, 418. 

God's interest in Man's Work 210 

God's Justice and the Poor 347 

God's own Account of the Creation 131 

God's Providence in all Organic Nature 100 

God's Provision in Nature adapted to all 134, 246 

God's Revelation — Love 151 

God's Ways of working and Man's need of work 229 

God's Wisdom as seen in the grass of the Field 119 

Goddess of getting on, the 364 

Goethe 13 

Gold, happiness and, 302, 315; significance of, 313. 

Gold preferred to God 383 

Golden age, the , 3 

Good and Evil, Heaven and Hell 259 

Good and Evil in All Things 245 

Good language in Moral Character 171 

Good Men and their Homes ^ 224 

€rood Samaritan, Ruskin a 45 

Good sometimes expressed by evil men 107 

Governmenit control of marriage 47 

Graft, the sin of Judas 367 

Grass of the field, God's wisdom in, 119 ; what we owe to it, 120 ; Scripture in . 120 

Grave, Victory of 418 

Gray, Miss E. C, afterwards Mrs. Ruskin 21 

Great Bodies obey Law 228 

Great Epochs in Art History 29 

Great men, are lonely, 20 ; Providence and, 342. 

Great Minds make small things great 86 

Great Paintings and God's honor 78 

Greater Pleasure in Small Things 178 

Greatness and Littleness 150 

Greatness of Man 69 

Greek Ar*: compared with Christian Art 112 

Greek goddess, Athena 305 

Greek mythology 320 

Growth of M<anlines3 291 

Guild, St. George's 48-50 

Guilt is in the vsrill 302 

Gypsies, Poem on the 417 

Hamlet, Fors is Ruskin's 374 

Happiness, dependent on honesty, 48 ; not in diamonds and gold, 302. 

Harrison, Fred'k, his life of Ruskin quoted 4, 35, 176, 208, 209 

Harmony of Body and Soul 353 

Havergal 3 

Ha warden, Gladstone's home, Ruskin a guest at 63 

Heaven, hell and, 259 ; hope of, 422 ; light of, 423. 

He Bowed the Heavens 130 

Heart, pure, 303 ; Virtue — Athena as the, 305. 

Hebrew Prophets and political economy 35 

Hebrews, the book of, as literature 200 

Hedgehog Bible reading 303 

Hell-fire, meaning of 246 

Help men to help themselves 39 

Hemans, Mrs 3 

Herbert, George 55, 83. 89. 209. 413, 414 



434 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

Page 

Herod 256 

Hesiod, Commentary on planned 31 

Heterodoxy, not much in Ruskin's religious faith 58 

Hezekiah, punishment of 256 

Higbtest Pleasures through difficuRies 94 

Hillis, Newell Dwight 4, 13 

Hills, pride of the 422 

HiSTOBY AND CRITICISM OF AbT 164 

Historian, Ruskin as a 28 

Hobson, J. A., work on Ruskin quoted 11, 38, 43, 50, 89, 353 

Holland, Canon S., on Ruskin 15, 64 

Holmes, O. Wendell 3 

Holy Fear and Human terror 106 

Holy Spirit, the, 62 ; as a dove, 112, 123 ; grieving the, 198. 

Home, God in the, 225 ; choice of a 266 

Homes, for vrorkmen, 19, 39, 47, 407; what a million dollars would do, 39; 

of good men, 224 ; better, 225, 238, 407. 
Homer 199 ; Ruskin learned him from the Bible, 60. 

Homily, a Christmas ^ 389 

Honesty in advertising, 347 ; economy and, 343. 

Honesty is the Best Policy 354 

Honesty the Basis of Religion and Policy 357 

Honor, secret of power, 180 ; rectitude and, 319. 

Hood's Bridge of Sighs , 373 

Hooker, study of x, 89 

Hoppin, J. H., on Ruskin and art 29 

Horace, the Bible and 199 

HOKTUS INCLUSUS 332 

How Christ's Teaching was perverted 255 

How Christianity was corrupted 249 

How Men Worship 237 

How Raphael marked the Decline of Art 271 

How to hear a sermon 235 

How to be Satisfied 154 

How to help God 303 

Howard, John 19 

House, ours, and God's, 214 ; my Father's, 382. 
Human action, justice and, 344 ; providence and, 341. 

Humble Life, art and joy of, 154 

Human Souls as Business Assets 346 

Hunt, Holman, Ruskin's esteem of his work, x; famous picture of the Christ. .188 

Huxley 4 

Ichthyosaurus 219 

Ideas of Beauty, 79 ; nature of, 75. 

Ideal, the American 40 

Idolatry 291, 371 

Illegitimate power of money 39 

Ill-health of Ruskin 13, 23, 31 

Illustrations from the Bible 92 

Imagination, 88 ; the human, 108, 115 ; in Architecture 273 

Immortality, belief in 72 

Imperfection necessary to Progress 244 

Impractical, Ruskin sometimes was 46 

Improving the Word of God 234 

Incident which decided change in Ruskin's religious life 56 

India, redemption for 418 

Indifference to human suffering — why ? 174 

Infidel the, why he loves nature 267 

Infidelity, 255 ; worse than superstition, 286. 



INDEX 435 



Page 

Influence of the Bible on Mankind 196 

Influence of flowers 326 

Infinity of God 96 

Infinity of Space 95 

Inordinate play 257 

Inscriptions and Pictures in Churches 222 

Inspiration of the Scriptures, 197; theories of, 198. 

Inspired Men 118 

Intellect of no avail against sin 104 

Intellectual environment of Ruakin r 

Interest on money, the wrong of 37-8 

In Montibus Sanctis 330 

Irony of Ruskin 34 

Iron architecture 263, 273 

Is splendor in Temple services necessary? 212 

Isaac, blessing of 312 

Isaiah, quoted 35, 121, 139, 143 

Jacob, Ruskin wrestled like 24 

James, Prof. W., quoted 4 

James and Jude, cousins of Christ 298 

Jerome and the Bible 194, 200 

Jesus, in Gethsemane, 20; reverence of name of, 70; betrayal of, 159. 

Jesus, reverence of name of, 70 ; betrayal of 159 

Jewels 314 

Jewels, of no food value, 36; sharing of, 315. 

Jewels of God 315 

Job's Question of the Rain 379 

Job, book of 125, 131, 253, 267, 312, 313 

John, man sent from God 71 

John, St ,298 

Jones, Jenkin Lloyd, quoted 25, 33 

Jordan, the 267 

Joy, of giving money, the, 233 ; without labor is base, 357. 
Judas, sin of, 58, 302, 367 ; the betrayal, 159 ; fall of, 383. 

Judgment, day of 110, 421 

Justice as a Basis of Action 344 

Justice, divine, 98 ; God is, 152 ; rewards virtue — opposes vice, 174, 377 ; 
Judgment and, 367. 

Justice to Subordina^tes 278 

Justice in Education 377 

Kata Pushin, nom de plume of Ruskin 75, 205 

Keats, quoted 337 

King of Kings 366 

King of the Golden river 21 

Kingdom of God, the, 62, 369 ; is already come, 200 ; Ruskin weary for the, 328. 

Kingsley 4 

Know Thyself 176 

Know thyself to Know God 152 

Know the things of Nature 308 

Knowledge and Contentment 252 

Knowledge, assimilating it 253 

Koran, the Bible and 288 

Labor 305 

Lady, a, on Ruskin's letters 65 

Lamp of, Sacrifice, Truth. Power, Beauty, Life, Memory, Obedience, 208, 210, 
216, 220, 221, 222, 224, 227. 

Land ownership, Ruskin in advance of Henry George 46, 305 

Language, moral character and, 171 ; of Dante, Shakepeare and others i . tSlS 



436 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

Page 

Tjandsoape Painting not answered its end 77 

Last Supper 159 

Law, great bodies obey it 228 

Law greater tlian Liberty 227 

Laws, of truth and right 88 

Lawyer, the 344 

Leaves and Fruits 322 

Lebanon 262, 267 

Lecturer, Ruskin as a 42, 50 

Lectures, list of, 51-33 ; at Oxford, 176. 

Lectures on Art 166 

Lectures on Architecture and Painting 261 

Legislation 305 

Lessons from the Book of Job (Bee Job) 253 

Lessons of the Branch 322 

Lessons, of the Stones, 139 ; of the clouds, 192. 

Letter about Christmas 378 

Letters to the Clergy, 61; quotations from, 62; to Gladstone's daughters 64 

Letters to Ladies 332 

Levitical offering 211 

Levi'ticus quoted 127 

Liberty, Ruskin denied it, 47; what men call, 227, 305. 

Licentiousness in Marriage 46 

Lie, a flattering one 216 

Life a Delight, Death dreadful 321 

Life the only wealth 349 

Life, its Origin not in the dust 182 

Life, nature speaks 'to the noble, 125 ; laws of, 149 ; of Giotto, 157 ; Lamp of, 

208 ; pride of, 254 ; future of, 327 ; death-like form of, 417. 
Light, at evening, 70; let there be, 178; Christ giver of, 179; praying for, 

179 ; of the World, 188 ; Venice sinned against, 240. 

Lilies, Prof, Tyndall and the sun as author of the 329 

Limbs of the Mind 275 

Lincoln, Abraham 3 

Literary, century lights of, 3; Ruskin's work planned, 23; lion a, 28. 

Liturgy, good of 63 

Living in Honor the Secret of Power 180 

Livingstone, David 3 

Longfellow 3 

Look for literal Meaning of the Bible 317 

Looking through the sky 84 

Lord Lindsay's Christian Art 164 

Lord's Supper, without regard to place or priest 59 

Lord's prayer, the church and 61 

Lot, illustration from 64, 141 

Loudon's magazine 13, 205 

Love and Faith above Reason 102 

Love and Vital Beauty 99 

Love of Art not necessary to the Spiritual 239 

Love, Ruskin's affairs of, 7; poem of, 8; story of, 8; Rose La Touche, 22; 

the revelation of God, 151 ; guard of, 180 ; work of, God honors, 215, 

395; science and, 317. 

Lovers, parents should be consulted 9 

Love's Meinie 308 

Love, not Lust 396 

Lowell 3 

Luke, quoted ^^ 

Luxuriance of Ornament 216 

Maoaulay, Lord 3 



INDEX 437 



Page 

Madonna, the 305 

Magdalen, Mary, first at resurrection 160 

Malicious lying 216 

Malleson, Rev. F., letters to clergy addressed to 61 

Mammon, 338 ; God and, 363. 

Man in the Image of God 150 

Man, his soul value, 69 ; Ruskin the, 13 ; helplessness of, 29 ; 'real portrait of, 
81; skies created for, S3; mirror of God, 151; spdiritual nature of, 153; 
brute force and, 329 ; every, 382 ; heart of, sterile, 419. 

Manliness 268, 291 

Manifestations of the Supernatural Ill 

Manna, the, 313 ; at the Mountains, 421. 

Manner and Method in teaching, Ruskin's 43 

Manning, Cardinal, Ruskin and 58 

Man's Heritage 356 

Man's Indifference to Waste and Loss 241 

Man's two-fold Nature 222 

Man's work with God exalts 'him 220 

Mansions in my Father's House 382 

Manual training, Ruskin and 43 

Manufacture and Design 273 

Many Lives of Christ 297 

Marble churches 215 

Market, buy in the cheapest 345 

Marriage, Ruskin's views of, 9 ; Mrs. Ruskin to Millais, 21 ; at Cana, the, 158, 
414 ; State regulation of, 47, 356 ; not of supreme importance, 399. 

Marry, permission to 47 

Matthew, calling of, 297, 406 ; quoted from, 344, 390. 

Maxims of a Wise Man 347 

Memory .in architecture 224 

Memory, Lamp of, 206, 224 ; sweetness of the, 417. 

Men, loneliness of the great, 20; evil, and goodness of, 107; world's two groups 
of 394 ; why rich, or poor, 339 ; providence and great, 342. 

Men will see what they look for 138 

Men, not perfect as Machines are 243 

Men, not slaves if their Souls are free 243 

Mercy 245 

Merchant, <the 344 

Mica, a crumb of, God's axe 138 

Millais, the Artist, Ruskin's friendship for, x ; visit to Ruskin's home and mar- 
riage to Mrs. Ruskin, 21. 

Milton 3, 113, 129 

Mill, John Stuart, 4 ; Ruskin opposed to, 34, 353 ; 

Millionaires, 36; a suggestion 'to, 39. 

Mind, religious, 54; human, 109; limbs of 'the, 275; of Ruskin unchanged. .331 

Ministry, of science 91 

Minuteness, reverence of 150 

Missionaries, 19th Century 3 

Mission of the Flower 324 

Miser, cannot sing 171 

Mitford, May Russell, her sketch of Ruskin 21 

Miracle, the loaves, 120; the first — why wrought, 158; recognition of in nature, 331 

Modern Painters : Vol. 1 75 

Modern Painters : Vol. IT 88 

Modern Painters : Vol. Ill 114 

Modern Painters : Vol. IV 127 

Modern Painters : Vol, V 147 

Modem Painters, quotations from, 25, 26 ; first vol. published, 28 ; when writ- 
ten, 30 ; what it taught, 31 ; religious mind in, 67 ; great thoughts on 
peace, in, 71 ; first volume of, 73 ; reason for writing it, 74 ; close of, 147 ; 
no change of mind on, 331. 



438 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

Paee 

Modern Art, profiane 270 

Modesty, of Ruskin, 17; and piety, 287. 

Moffat, Rob't 31 

Money and Talents 339 

Mont Blanc, revisit to, 421 ; poem on, 423. 

Money, what it is, 37 ; should be free, 47 ; Joy of giving it, 233 ; principle in 

spending, 265, 305, 346; Christ and, 360, 393. 

Moody, D. L 3 

Moral Deeds effect our power for Good 306 

Moral Character Ruskin's always consistent, 56 ; language and, 171 ; art and, 306 

Moral work the expression of 'the Soul 30 

Moral Blindness and Selfishness 122 

Moral Quality of Wealth 345 

Moral Influence of Flowers 326 

Moral Sensibility and Truth 81 

Moral Judgment the Standard of Beauty 100 

Moral Diversity of Mankind 102 

Moral Virtues of Building 231 

Moral Quali'ties in Art 273 

Moral Unity of Sympathy dn Art 277 

Moral Value of Restraint , 282 

Mornings in Florence 294 

Mosaical System, the 212 

Moses, 375 ; song of, 60, 312, 318 ; face of, 112 ; Aaron and, 119, 141 ; death 

of, 142 ; transfiguration of, 144, 145 ; Ararat and 311 

Moses at the Mountain 143 

Mother of Ruskin 10, 11, 12 

Mother's prayers, absence of 417 

Mount, Sermon on the, 60, 124, 125 ; of transfiguration, 144, 146. 
Mountains, Spirit of, 84; Christ and, 118; beauty of, 127; ministries of, 134; 

136 ; appointed as refuges, 141 ; strength given to, 423 ; peace of, 422. 

Mountains and Men 85 

Mount Sinai 213 

Multiplication of human life and political economy 36 

MUNERA PuLVERis, 352; an epoch-making book, 35. 

Music, the best and worst, the popular 415 

Mutual Good in care of the Streets 266 

Nations, fall of, 67, 230 ; do not regard lessons, 68 ; should own the permanent 
wealth, 44 ; salt of, 90 ; progress of, 164 ; death of, 284 ; how they write 
their autobiographies, 296; Garden of God in, 324; Christ's methods best 
for, 354. 

Nations forget Grod in midst of Plenty 89 

National debt, there should be none ! 44 

Natural scenery, Christ and 268 

Natural History of the Soul 288 

Nature and Truth, both hate a lie 26 

Nature speaks to the noble Life 125 

Nature the great school of Power 220 

Nature, variety in, 81 ; has a body and soul, 82 ; beauty in, expression of the 
Divine, 98 ; God's providence in, 100 ; laws of, 130 ; wisdom of, 178 ; 
beauty in, 186 ; lonliness of, 417. 

Nature's Best Rooms to think in 206 

Nature's Warnings and the Mystery of Punishment 140 

Necessity of law 254 

Necessary Play 257 

Newdigate prize at Oxford 9 

Newton, SIt Chas 10 

Newton, Sir Isaac 291 



INDEX. 439 

Page 

New testament 210 

New York Tribune, quoted 25, 208 

Nebuchadnezzar 256 

Niagara, the channel of 135 

Nightingale, Florence 3 

Nineteenth Century Storm Cloud 328 

No Beauty without Truth 79 

No Vulgarity in Truth 117 

Nobleness in the Aged 278 

Noblest Things lost 162 

Norton, Chas. Eliot, corrects Ruskin's view of United States, 40; on Ruskin's 
religious unsettlement, 56, 413, 415. 

Notes on the Construction of Sheepfolds 403 

Number of Days 327 

Numbers, Book of 143, 312 

Obedience essential to a Knowledge of God 391 

Obedience, 69 ; Lamp of, 208, 226 ; liberty and, 227 ; filial 294 ; tx> God, 295. 

Of Power, 75 ; Of Truths in Skies 75 

Of Truths of Earth ; Of Truth of Water 75 

Of Truth of Vegetation 75 

Old Knighthood, the 295 

Old testament and the new 210, 312 

Oliver Goldsmith 16 

Olivet, Christ at 119, 129 

On the Old Road 398 

Omnipotence 218 

Onyx, type of all stones 313 

Orthodoxy, Ruskin's revolt from 57 

Oppression of the Poor 279, 281 

Othello 19 

Other Ministries of Mountains 136 

OUB Fathers have told us 193 

Oxford, lectures, when written 30, 176 

Oxford University, Ruskin at, 7; Contemporaries at, 10; Professor of, 23, 
50; lectures at, 291, 294. 

Pain as a Source of Pleasure 190 

Painter and Preacher 82 

Painting, lectures on 261 

Palestine 3 

Papa ver Rhoeas 325 

Parable of The last Seven days 172 

Parables, wrong use of 391 

Paradise, 63; lost, quoted, 129; rivers of, 376. 

Paradox, Ruskin a 33, 56 

Parents, duty of 294 

Parker, Dr. Joseph 3 

Past and Present, Carlyle quoted 35 

Pastor, the, his functions and duties 344 

Path to God 418 

Paternal government 47 

Patience and Moral taste 93 

Paton, John 3 

Paul, Apostle, men know more than the, 69 ; epistle of, 249 ; quoted, 288 ; rever- 
ence for, 383 ; cross of, 407. 

Peabody 19, 39 

Peace. 67. 71 ; makers of, blessed, 181 ; not won by fate, 283 ; message of, 289 ; 
mountains of, 422; publishers of, 418. 



440 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

Pago 

Pearls of great price 315 

Pen-portrait of Ruskin 14 

Pentateuch, the 312 

Perfect, men not 243 

Permission to marry 47 

Perspective, Manual of 161 

Peter, his bold Swim, 115; Christ and, 116; at the transfiguration, 144; his 

cross, 406 ; as the rock of the church, 304. 

Physical Education 43 

Pharisee, the 254 

Physician, the 344 

Plan and purpose of St. George's Guild 48 

Philosopher's stone, the 359 

Piety, modesty and 287 

Pharaoh, the Assyrians and 323 

Plato, men know more than 69 

Play, function of, exercise, wisdom in, necessity of, inordinate 256 

Pleasures, through difficulties, 94 ; in purity, 95 ; in small things, 178. 

Poe, Edgar Allen 3 

Poems, Ruskin's 416 

Poem, domestic sorrow expression of 22 

Pope, bis version of an honest man 343 

Policy, honesty not to be based on 357 

Politics, Ruskin's place in 33, 47 

Poets of the Nineteenth Century 3 

Prayer, absence of Mother's 417 

Precious Stones, 312 ; ladies and, 314 ; loveliest in the world, 314. 
Prodigal, son the, 361 ; confession of, 362. 

Providence and Great Men 342 

Prevention better than Cure 342 

Providence, 293 ; Contentment and, 350. 

Providence and Human Action 341 

Pbos^bpina 320 

Political Economy, 337, 396 ; Ruskin's views of, 31, 343 ; aim of, 36 ; views of, 

partly attained in America, 40 ; modem science and, 297 ; of art, 337 ; 

essays on. 352; strange kind of, 349. 

Popularity, danger of 79 

Possession only to Contentment 153 

Power of Choice 93 

Power of Money 37, 346 

Power of art abused 78 

Power, 75 ; never wasted, 78 ; of Christianity, 200 ; the secret of, 180 ; Lamp 

of, 208, 220 ; nature the school of, 220 ; for good increases with doing, 307. 

Practical Teaching of Nature 123 

Praying for Light 179 

Prayer, 62, 63 ; value of, place of, 169. 

Poor, the oppression of, 279; ministry to the, 213; God and the, 348; need 

more than meat, 349. 

Prayers, of Episcopal church 63 

Pb^tebita, 413 ; young people should read it 41 

Preaching, Ruskin accused of, 66 ; failure of 107 

Precious Stones 302, 312-314 

Preface ix 

Pre-Raphaelites x 

Pbe-Raphaelitism 155 

President, the U. S. ranks high 41 

Price and value 36 

Pride and Phariseeism 254 



INDEX, 441 

Page 

Pride of Life and fear of Death 254 

Pride destructive of Beauty 105 

Prince of Peace, rejected, robber preferred 349 

Principles, General 75 

Production, best reward of workman and artist 42 

Progress, imperfection and 244 

Progress in Purity our truest pleasure 95 

Progress of Nations 164 

Promised land, the 145 

Prophecies and epistles on dress 397 

Proselytism 289 

Proserpina 320 

Protestant egotism of, 61 ; view of 'the Cross, 196 ; errors of, 255. 

Prout, Samuel 165 

Proverbs quoted 128, 280, 347-8, 397 

Providence and Gontemtment 350 

Providence, 68; in nature, 100; in, every creature, 101, 246, 341, 423. 

Psalms in quaint verse 380 

Psalms 60, 121, 133, 198, 237, 280, 287, 380, 384, 390, 392 , 397 

Public Ownership 46 

Publishers, indifference of to merit 27 

Punishment, mystery of, 140; God and, 256; crime and, 359; employment 
better than, 396. 

Pure in heart sees God 93 

Purity an Essence of Light and a Type of the Divine 98 

Purity, pleasures in, 95 ; sees itself, 104. 

Purpose and Motive determines our Value 274 

Quaint Verse of Psalms 380 

Queen of the Air 305 

Quixotism, doing good, and 264 

Rahab, justified by works 378 

Raphael 271 

Ravens, feeding of the 417 

Real and Seeming Wealth 345 

Reason, love and faith above it 102 

Rectitude and Honor 319 

Redeemer 249 

Redemption, scheme of 211 

Red Sea, Israel and, 133 ; the, 213. 

Reformer, Ruskin as a 35 

Reformation^ the 255 

Religion and Realistic Art 167 

Religion, fundamental truiths of, 59; no civilization without, 48; future of art 

in, 116 ; first place to, 250 ; superstition and, 285 ; diversities of, 290 ; 

infallible, 408 ; God of, the same as the God of fellowship, 353. 
Religions, no sham, 54 ; heterodoxy of Ruskin, 58 ; essential character of, 

61 ; spirit of, seen in greater works, 66. 

Religious Mind of Ruskin 54 

Religious truth, adherence to x 

Religious Thought in Art 75 

Resemblance of man to Grod 151 

Responsibility and the Bible 195 

Responsibility of Wealth 340 

Rest a Sign and a Gift 97 

Rest, Spirit of, lacking in America 60 

Restraints, Value of • 227, 282 

Resurrection, the, 160, 190; Magdalen first at, 160. 

Revelation, imposable to the corrupt mind 151 



44* THE RELIGION OF RUSK IN 

Page 

Revftrence, lack of 258 

Revolt from Orthodoxy x 

Rhone, the Valley of the 135 

Riches, the idol of, 371 ; the poor and, 348. 

Rich Men, where do they get their living 45 

Right and Wrong 302 

Right Dress for Man and Woman 397 

Right things come of Right Influences 275 

Right things proceed from the Divine 167 

Right recognition of Deeds 168 

Righteousness and Justice 377 

Robertson, Fred'k 3 

Romance 264 

Romance, the true and false in, 191; of friendship 264 

Romanist, errors of 255 

Rooms to think in. Nature's best 206 

Roosevelt, President, 33 ; his call for family life, 39. 

Roots, their Essential Function 320 

Rosetti, Raskin's estimate of x 

Ruskin, John, Life of, — 

Childhood and Youth 3 

The Man 13 

Art Critic and Author 25 

Reformer and Economist 33 

Lecturer and Teacher 42 

Religious Mind of 54 

Ruskin, John James, Father of John, 7; his partner in business 7, 42 

Ruskin, Mrs., Mother of John, 10 ; her teaching of the Scriptures, 10, 11, 60, 389 
Ruskin, childhood and youth, 3 ; a world's teacher, 4 ; date of birth, 4 ; his 
first volume, 5 ; early poems, 6 ; his opinion of himself, 6 ; love affairs of, 
7, 9, 22; his defence of Turner, 6; designed for clergyman, 9; duty of 
lovers, 9 ; Dean Stanley, Gladstone and others, 10 ; mothers Bible training, 
the Bdble his mental food 10, 11, 12, 60, 389 ; estimate of his genius, 13, 
205 ; his wit and skill, 14 ; pen portrait of, 14, 16 ; his honesty, 16 ; as a 
thinker, 17 ; his ideal of woman, 18 ; marriage of, 21 ; illness of, 23 ; New 
York Tribune, on his works, 25 ; artist first, then critic, 26 ; his phenom- 
enal success, 27 ; oare of Turner's drawiings, 27 ; his great literary scheme, 
31 ; a paradox, 33 ; his politics, 33 ; never voted, 34 ; his political economy, 
34 ; loans his servant eleven hundred jwunds, 37 ; a millionaire at his 
father's death. 39 ; his view of American government, 40 ; of manual train- 
ing, 43; his views of wealth and Tolstoi, 44; not always practical, 46; 
his views of marriage, 46, 47, 357, 359; his Utopian schemes, 48; 
as Oxford Professor, 50 ; his dramatic action, 51 ; the Episco- 
pal church and, 54; George Herbert and, 55, 83, 89; Charles E. 
Norton on religious change of, 56 ; Catholic Spirit of, 58 ; Cardinal 
Manning and, 58 ; not a Roman Catholic, 59 ; his radical view of truth, 
66 ; drew inspiration from Scripture, 70 ; immortality and death of, 72 ; 
Crossing the Bar, 72; nom de plume of, 73; his reasons for writing Mod- 
ern Painters, 74 ; word-painting of, 89 ; change in religious faith, 114 ; 
critical mind of, 147 ; religious mind of, more settled, 193 ; early learning 
of, from the Bible, 199; his "Seven Lamps." 208; true to the Truth, 
284 ; not a puritan, 284 ; at Florence, 294 ; Oariyle and, 17, 24. 34, 65, 
66, 176, 301, 352; kept account of the weather for fifty years, 328; his 
life in Praeterita, 413; influences of Byron. Scott, Shakspeare, Pope, 
Homer, 316, 416; Scott, a favorite author, 399; biography of, in Prae- 
terita, 413 ; early poems, 416. 

Sabbath, Ruskin's first broken ^* 

Sacred classic literature ^^ 



INDEX, 443 

Page 
Sacrifice, mystery of, 189 ; Lamp of, 208, 210 ; definition of, 210 ; of the heart, 211 

Sacrificial Types muat cost something 211 

Salsette and Elephanta, prize poem 10 

Saloon as Prop of College 318 

Salt of Nation* 90 

Salvation, not proclaimed to dishonest traders 358 

Samuel, quotation from 397 

Samuel Prout 164 

Sanctity of Color in the Scriptures 127 

Sanctity in Nature 123 

Satan, sold to 229 

Satire 258 

Savior, the eternal, 141 ; in Bethlehem, 379. 

Savonarola, Ruskin another 24 

Scarlet Glory 325 

Scenery, Christ and natural 268 

Schism, the root of 107 

Science, the higher ministry of, 91 ; the duty of, 182 ; of architecture, 205 ; 

art greater than, 251 ; love and, 317. 
Scott, Walter, 4, 10, 31 ; a favorite of Ruskin's, 399. 

Scriptures, xi ; training in by mother, 10, 11, 416; regarded as final authority, 
60 ; adapted to all men, 68 ; great mands inspired by the, 70 ; practical 
teaching of the, 123, 388 ; quotations from, 129, 379 ; the subjects of 
Giotto's paintings, 157 ; in Ariadne Florentina, 184 ; value of, 195 ; Mosaic 
and Apostolic, the, 195 ; study of the, 197 ; inspiration of, 197 ; the, on the 
poor, 280; motto from for political economy, 344; in Time and Tide, 356; 
in Fors, 375-7; au/thority of, for dress, 397 (see Bible). 

Scripture Imagery in the Grass 121 

Scudder, Vida D., quotations from 4, 33, 35 

Sea, stories of the, 230 ; home at the, 421. 

Seer, Ruskin a 23 

Seaman, the old, his story 420 

Self-sacrifice of Men in every age 244 

Self-sacrifice of Ruskin 20, 27, 39, 42, 45, 48 

Selfishness and moral blindness 122 

Sensuality fatal to Beauty in Art 92, 105 

Sentimental poem 22 

Sermon, how to hear a 235 

Sermon on the Mount 60, 124, 125, 126 

Serpent, wisdom of 318 

Sesame and Lilies 18, 405 

Seven days, the last 172 

Seven Lamps of Architectube, Thk 208 

Seven Lamps, 69, 208 ; eloquence of, 209. 

Severn, Joseph, Ruskin at home of 414 

Shaftesbury, Lord 19 

Shakspeare, xi, 8, 19; Caesar, Othello, Antony, Romeo, Hamlet, Lear, 19; 
drew inspiration from the Bible, 70. 

Shem, Ham and Japheth, genealogical tree of 375 

Shepherds, the Savior and the 379 

Sight, spiritual 178 

Simplicity and Contentment 177 

Simplest Truths neglected 124 

Sin of Judas, the, 58 ; graft, 367. 

Sin consists an Choice of Evil 247 

Sin will see sin and Purity will see itself 104 

Sin, 217 ; the Apostles on, 248 ; ugliness and, 262. 422. 

Sing, the miser cannot, 171 ; not to, disgraceful, 415. 

Sins of Venice 240 



444 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

Page 

Sir Joshua and Holbein 164 

Sketching from nature 43 

Skies, beauty and variety of, 83 ; looking through, 84. 

Sloth, the 316 

Small things give greater pleasure 178 

Social Reformer, Ruskin as a 11, 38, 48, 50 

Socialist, Ruskin not a 38, 47 

Sodom, the bread of 154 

Soldier, functions and duties of 344 

Solomon, the first great Naturalist, 268 ; temple of, 352. 

Son of Man, no place for head of 29 

Song, an Index to Moral Emotion 170 

Song, Moses' 60 

Song-birds, poets and 308 

Soul, body and, 260, 353 ; natural history of -the, 288 ; no fear of sin, the base, 

260 ; not a machine, 148. 

Soul Culture and Bodily Beauty 102 

Soul of Man a mirror of Mind of God 151, 152 

Souls, as Assets 346 

Souls, value of, 69 ; casting away, 71 ; freedom of, 243 ; sale of, 420. 

Space, infinity of 95 

Sparrows, men more value than, 36 ; condemned Solomon's temple, 352. 

Speaking truth, diflSculty of 217 

Spectator, the, quotation from iii 

Speculation, morals of 282 

Spencer, Herbert , x, 4 

Spenser, quotation from 106 

Spiritual Unity 97 

Spiritual Ennoblement 232 

Spirit of God, everywhere words alike, 98 ; i>oured out on Giotto, 222. 

Spiritual life strengthened 167 

Spiritual Nature of Man 153 

Spiritual Sight 178 

Spurgeon, Chas. H 3 

Squirrel, the 317 

Stars guided by God, 419 ; none can restrain them, 422. 

Stanley, Dean 10 

Stewardship, meaning of 338 

Streets, care of, good dn 266 

St George's Guild, 44 ; object of, 48 ; gifts to, 48 ; weakness of, 50. 

St. Mark's Rest 296 

Stones, lessons of the, 139, 310; precious, 314. 

Stone Race, the 310 

Strength and unity in all things 96 

Storm, terror of a, 258 ; cloud of the 19th century, 328. 

Stones of Venice, when, written, 30; evidence of religious mind, 70; Vol. I, 

230;Vol. II, 235; Vol. Ill, 249. 

Study of Art and Architecture 58 

Sublime in death, the 80 

Subordinates, justice 'to 278 

Success, as author, 27 ; secrets of, 220. 

Sun, greatness and distance of the, 251 ; Prof. Tyndall on, 329. 

Supernatural, >the Ill 

Supper, the Lord's 59, 158-9 

Superstition and Naturalism 284 

Superstition and Religion 285 

Superstitious WoTship better than infidelity 286 

Susie's letters and birds 332 

Swallow, the 309 



INDEX 445 

Page 

Swedenborg, quotation from 42 

Symmetry — A type of Divine Justice 98 

Sympathy, unity of 277 

Sydney Smith, Modem PaiMers and 147 

Tabernacle, for the sun, 132 ; splendor in the, 212 ; is in you, the, 315. 

Tailor, the village, tribute to Ruskin 71 

Take no troublous thought 154 

Talents, money and 339 

Taxes, on property and proiwrtioned 38 

Teach onr youth to see rather than to say 148 

Teacher, Ruskin as a 42, 66 

Temperan<:fe 177 

Temple, beauty of 169 

Temptation, Job and 253 

Ten Commandments 249 

Tennyson, 3, 17 ; the Princess quoted, 18, 54 ; Crossing the bar, 72. 

Terror, fear and 106 

Thackeray 400 

Theft, the worst of Crimes 359 

The Function of Beauty 79 

Sublime in Death 80 

Real portrait of a Man— his soul 81 

Painter and the Preacher 82 

Will to believe, quotation from 4 

Skies created for Man 83 

Spirit of the Mountains 84 

Finger of God in Nature 87 

Salt of Nations 90 

Higher Ministry of Science 91 

Divine in every Human attribute 91 

Sense of Beauty in the heart 92 

Pure in heart sees God 93 

Root of schism and the failure of Preaching 107 

Dignity of Human Imagination 108 

Judgment Day by Tintoret 110 

Supernatural in great Pictures Ill 

Right use of the Imagination 115 

Greatness of true Humility 122 

"Day" of Genesis 133 

Wisdom and love of Creation 134 

Mountain Alps and the Creator 137 

Transfiguration i 144 

Mountain Glory 145 

Lavr of Help and Hurt 148 

Human soul as a reflection of the Divine 152 

Marriage in, Oana 158 

Last Supper 158 

Resurrection 160 

The Elements of Drawing 161 

The Elements of Perspective 161 

Master's Gross and ours 168 

Value of a Consecrated place of prayer 169 

Beauty of God's temple 169 

Origin of good 172 

The Eagle's Nest 176 

Guardianship of Love 180 

The Laws of Fesole 185 

Light of the World 188 



446 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

Pa»o 

The Abt of England 189 

Mystery of Sacrifice 189 

True and the False in Romance 191 

Law of Wisdom 192 

Power of the Cross 196 

Psalter as a Book of Worship 198 

Bible as History and Literature 199 

The Poetby of Abchitectube 205 

Religious Value of hilly country 206 

The Seven Lamps of Abchitectube 208 

Lamp of Sacrifice 210 

Best Gifts — God's House and ours 213 

Lamp of Truth 216 

Flattering lie worse than the Malicious 216 

Fall of Medieval Architecture 219 

Lamp of Power 220 

Secret of Success 220 

Lamp of Beauty 221 

Lamp of Life 222 

Lamp of Memory 224 

Glory of a Building 226 

Lamp of Obedience 227 

The Stones of Venice 230, 235, 249 

Joy of Giving Money 233 

Enchantment of distance 233 

Unfathomable Universe 234 

Inscrutable Wisdom of God 235 

Episcopal Church 236 

Moral relation of color 241 

Divine Nature typified in color » 241 

Meaning of Hell-fire 246 

Apostles on Virtue and Sin 248 

Sun's greatness and distance 251 

Scope of Truth in art 251 

Function of the Artist 252 

Necessity and function of Law 254 

Reformation — Protestant and Romanist errors 255 

Proper Function of Play 256 

Satirical and lack of Reverence 258 

Terror of a Storm 258 

Towers of the Bible 262 

Moral principle in spending Money 265 

Influence of Buying things 266 

Bible delights dn Natural imagery 267 

The Two Paths 273 

Moral Value of Work 279 

Morals of Speculation 282 

The Study of Abchitectube 284 

Angel's Message of Peace 289 

Worship of Graven Images 292 

Old Knighthood 296 

Queen, of the Air 305 

Earth's three iEras 311 

Dew and the hoar Frost 312 

Manna 313 

Tabernacle of God 315 

Sloth, the squirrel 316 

Leaf 322 

Flower 324 

Rose, the Type of Womanhood 320 



INDEX 447 

Page 

The Stobm Cloud of the Nineteenth Century 328 

The King of the Golden Riveb 333 

Meaning of Stewardship 338 

Ministry and honor of Wealth 341 

Functions and Duties of Professions 344 

Search for Food and something better 350 

Philosopher's Stone 359 

Prodigal Son 361 

Crowning Sins 362 

Prodigal's Confession 362 

Meaning of the Parable 362 

The Cbown of Wild Olive 364 

Sin of Judas, — graft 367 

Idol of Riches 371 

Waste and Vice of Betting 371 

Riches of Usury and Christmas 381 

Book of Genesis 385 

Genesis order of work 386 

World's two groups of men 394 

The Pleasures of England 410 

Influence of the Story of Christianity 410 

tTnese are my jewels 346 

Thy Kingdom Come 369 

Transfiguration, of Moses, 144 ; Mount of, 146, 164. 

Time is Money 360 

Time and Tide 356 

Tintoret's great Picture of the Crucifixion .- 109 

Thomas and Philip 298 

Theology, Students of 189 

Theoretic faculty, the 88 

Tithes belong to God always 213 

Tolstoi 44 

Trees, flowers and 261, 326 

Towers of the Bible 262 

Tourgenieff compared with Ruskin 15 

Tory, Ruskin a 33, 47 

Treachery of human speech 420 

Tribune, the New York, quoted 25 

True and False tastes 94 

Truth and Nature hate a lie 26 

Truth in Architecture 30 

Truth ajnd Work 218 

Truth, of beauty, the, 26; no beauty without it, 79, 262; always essential, 
80 ; moral sensibility of, 81 ; no vulgarity in, 117 ; Lamp of, 208, 216, 218 ; 
scope of in art, 251. 

True Art testifies God 175 

True Justice rewards Virtue — Opposes Vice 173 

True Manliness 286 

True Science begins and ends in Love 317 

Truths, simplest neglected 124 

Turner, Ruskin's first defence of, 6 ; imagination of, 7 ; drawings of bequeathed 
to nation, 27; defence of, 77; close of life of, 269. 

Turner's Sunrise on the Alps 84 

Turner's Message of Divine Truth 86 

Two-fold nature of man 222 

Types of Beauty in Nature 221 

Tyndall x, 4, 329 

Tyre, punishment of 68 



448 THE RELIGION OF RUSKIN 

Page 

Ugliness and Sin — Truth and Beauty 262 

Ungratefulness of man 419 

United States, President of, ranks high as Kings, 41; Ruskin's views of pub- 
lic utilities gaining in, 46. 

Unity and Comprehensiveness of God 96 

Unity, in all things, 96 ; spiri'tual, 97 ; of art, 273. 

Universe, unfathomable, the 234 

University, Ruskin entered at IS, 7 ; not proud of career in, 13. 

Unto this last, what it taught 31, 35 

Unto This Last 343 

Usury, radical opposition, to, 36; Christmas and, 381. 

Utopia 48, 264 

Value, a final definition of, 35 ; power of, 36 ; men more of than sparrows, 36 ; 
of second vol. of Modern Painters, 88 ; of last vol. of Modern Painters, 
147 ; of place of prayer, 169 ; determined by purpose and motive, 274 ; 
of work, the moral, 279. 

Value of Money consists in its Power 346 

Value of Restraints — Liberty and Obedience 227 

Value of Scripture in the Common Language 195 

Val D' Abno 287 

Vandyke, Henry, on doubt 57 

Venice sinned against light ^ 240 

Venice 230, 237, 242 

Variety in Nature 81 

Vegetation, truth of 75 

Vice, Justice opposes it, 174 ; of betting, 371. 

Villa, the 205 

Village tailor's tribute 71 

Virgins, the wise 315 

Vital Beauty, love and 99 

Vital power, what it is not known to science 321 

Virtue, justice rewards it, 174 ; the Apostles on, 248 ; the origin of 209 

Virtues, Cardinal 305 

Voice, crying in the Wilderness, Ruskin as a 328 

Voted, Ruskin never 34 

Vulgarity, none in truth 117 

Weigh the words of the Bible 280 

Wages, struggle for 67 

Waves, stones and 310 

Waldensian preacher, Ruskin and the 56 

War — Right or Wlrang? 283 

War, causes of 125, 364 

Water, truth of 75 

Waste and loss, man's indifference to 242 

Waste and Decay as Divine instruments 137 

We do not see the whole of anything 139 

Wealth, discussion of, 36; Ruskin's, 39; excited enquiry, 45; the ennobling 

thing of, 42 ; phantasm of, 292 ; responsibility of, 340 ; ministry of, 341 ; 

moral quality of, 337, 345 ; life and, 349 ; work greater than, 366. 

What Christianity is 414 

What fools are for 339 

What God gives 252 

What it means to Take up the Cross 406 

What men call Liberty 227 

What the human Mind can not do 109 

What we need to know of the Bible 195 

Whistler 'the painter, story of 17 



INDEX 449 



Page 
Whi-ttier 3 

Why Christian and Infidel both love Nature 2G9 

Why love Precious Stones 314 

Why Nations fall 230 

Why the Poor are poor and how they are oppressed 281 

Why stand idle? 422 

Willard, Frances E 3 

Williams, the missionary 3 

Wisdom, 70, 236 ; of God, 235 ; of Serpent, 318 ; in Play, 256. 

Wise man, maxims of 347 

Wit, skill and, of Ruskin 14 

Witnesses for God 89 

Womanhood, Childhood and Christianity 191 

Womanhood, the rose the type of 326 

Women, ideal of, 18 ; as artists, 18 ; rights of, 19 ; lament sufferings of Christ, 

168 ; beauAy of religion in, 327 ; Bible and, 372. 
Word of God, 199 ; improving it, 234. 
Wordsvs^orth, 3, 373 ; quotations from, 84, 123. 

Word-painting of Buskin 88 

Work for Everyone 408 

Work with God is wise Work 368 

Work greater than Wealth 366 

Work with your Heart in it 223 

Work of Iron, in Nature, Art and Policy 273 

Work, everybody must, 44, 252; faith inspires for, 153; of God's hands, 170; 
gospel of, 209 ; man's, God's interest in, 210 ; truth and, 218 ; of man and 
God's working, 229 ; essay on, 364 ; Genesis order of, 386. 

Workmen, homes of 19, 39 

World, Kingdoms of, to Christ 201 

Worship, the Psalter as a book of, 198 ; how men, 237 ; of images, 293. 

Wrong Use of Parables 391 

Wrong, right and, 302; cannot be forced to do, 302. 

Xenophon, life of, 31; quoted, 288. 

Young, the poet, quoted 264 

Young artists, to 87 

Young girls, advice to 58 

Young men, do not die of love, 9 ; Rusbin's counsel to, 57. 

Youth, genius of, 13; teach them to see something, 148; despise not 272 

Zaceheus restores fourfold 298 

Zechariah, quoted 344 

Poems 416 

Remembrance 417 

Life and Death without hope 417 

Redemption for India 418 

The Path to God 418 

Where Death is 419 

Charitie 419 

The old Seaman 420 

Judgment Day 421 

The grand Chartreuse 421 

The Glacier 422 

Written among the Basses Alps 422 

Mont Blanc 423 



hPI 




1 1 II. ii 111 III. 11 lull iiiii mil II III Liiii III 

014 529 270 • 



